M2A-VM HDMI and Corsair 4GB DDR2 PC2-6400C5 Twinx

I could use some advice here, I'm struggling with random blue screens, sometimes it will do this after minutes, other times after hours or even days. It can occur whilst sitting at the desktop or whilst in an application.

 

I've tried Vista 32 and 64 bit, and XP 64 bit and they all display the same behaviour.

 

The board is an asus m2a-vm hdmi with 1603 bios version I think, 16 something anyway and the ram is a 4gb corsair kit, XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX, I've tried the voltage at 1.8, 1.9 and 2.0, the board does support going up to 2.1 volts but I didn't try that.

 

I've tried single sticks and this hasn't worked either, I've tried removing the video card to see if that was causing the problem and used the onboard gfx instead, I was still getting blue screens, additionally I've tried dropping the ram settings down to 667 instead of 800mhz, again no joy.

 

To be fair I don't think there is anything wrong with the ram and the motherboard is probably a good board, I just think it is a compatibility issue, I should have checked the Corsair website before buying and didn't, after selecting my board in the configurator I can see that this 4gb kit is not supported, so my question is to memory guy or whoever can help is... is there a set of settings that may give me a chance of stability with this board and memory?

 

In closing I do not think this is a power issue as the antec sonata 3 case has a 500w earthwatts power supply, more than enough for my setup...

 

Thanks for reading, I appreciate the help,

 

regards,

J.

Are you running with two or four modules of the 6400C5s?

Additionally I just wanted to add that I have tried to run the system with the ddr2 setup manually to 800MHz and set to 1.9 volt manually too, this is the configuration that I have mostly tried although as I have said I have tried 2.0 volts and dropped the ram to 667MHz, with the setting mentioned previously I ran memtest86 for 21 hours doing 9 or 10 passes with zero errors... help!

 

regards,

J.

Wow that was a quick reply, was just about to go to bed and take a look tomorrow...

 

It is a 4GB kit consisting of 2x2GB sticks,

 

regards,

J.

That DRAM needs a high tRFC. Be sure to set the Advanced DRAM settings to Auto.

 

JumperFree Configuration

 

CPU Configurationl

 

+1.2VNBSB = 1.3v

DDR2 Voltage Control = 1.9v

CPU Voltage Control = Auto

CPU Multiplier = Auto

CPU Frequency = 200

AMD Cool 'n' Quiet = Enabled

 

Chipset DRAM Configuration

 

Timing Mode = Manual

Memory Clock Frequency = DDR2 800

2T Mode = Enabled

CAS Latency (CL) = 5

TRCD: 5

TRP: 5

TRAS: 15

 

All other Set to Auto

 

LDT Bus Frequency = Auto

 

Shut the system down. Insert a single stick of the 6400 in the first slot closes to the CPU. Restart and boot to the Memtest CD and allow for two full passes. Remove that stick and repeat with the second stick. If both sticks pass, then set to the first and third slot and retest again.

 

Results?

Hi DerekT, thanks for taking a look at this and giving advice, I really appreciate it.

 

I've managed to set most of what you have pointed out, in green below I have done it, in red I just can't find it;

 

JumperFree Configuration

 

CPU Configurationl

 

+1.2VNBSB = 1.3v

DDR2 Voltage Control = 1.9v

CPU Voltage Control = Auto

CPU Multiplier = Auto

CPU Frequency = 200

AMD Cool 'n' Quiet = Enabled

 

Chipset DRAM Configuration

 

Timing Mode = Manual

Memory Clock Frequency = DDR2 800

2T Mode = Enabled

CAS Latency (CL) = 5

TRCD: 5

TRP: 5

TRAS: 15

 

All other Set to Auto

 

LDT Bus Frequency = Auto

 

I'm sure the CAS Latency, TRCD, TRP and TRAS are important to match to this ram, I will continue with the testing anyway in the hope that the other settings have helped, will let you know how I go on,

 

many thanks,

J.

The first stick went into the first slot and was memtested overnight doing 6 passes, no errors

 

The second stick went into the first slot and was memtested while I was at work doing 8 passes, no errors

 

Given my previous comments with both sticks in and no errors in 9 passes I'm taking it that there is not a problem with the memory and the motherboard combo, I know the Corsair support forum is not the place for this but does anyone have any idea why I'm blue screening, could it be the sata drive or more likely the sata cable to the single hard drive that I have in the system?

 

DerekT, you mentioned

 

If both sticks pass, then set to the first and third slot and retest again

 

I aren't sure what you mean by this, the motherboard manual shows that with two sticks I should use the two ram slots nearest to the cpu, this is where memtest ran for 21 hours and 9 passes without failing.

 

I do apologise if you missed that comment and that it shows that the ram was working all the time, didn't mean to waste your time.

 

regards,

J.

According to the manual for that motherboard, there aren't any options to manually set the 5-5-5-15 latencies or the 2T command rate in the BIOS for that board. The link to the manual (page 2-22):

 

http://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socketAM2/M2A-VM%20HDMI/e2976_m2a-vm-hdmi.pdf

 

Hopefully, DerekT's other numbers will be enough to get you running. Good luck.

 

ps: you're correct, dual channel is attained with sticks in slots A1 and B1 (page 1-14), the slots closest to the cpu. That board is a bit different slot-wise from other Asus boards, usually slots 1 and 3 as well as 2 and 4 are the dual channel slots on most Asus boards.

Thanks for taking a look at it Gavin, I've been struggling with this setup since I bought it at the beginning of the year.

 

I've just downloaded a half gig iso, done a full virus scan, looped a video in a reduced sized window and was browsing the net in two ie7 windows, all simultaneously, no bluescreen or anything, having said that it could crash on me whilst sitting at the desktop tomorrow, I'll certainly report back if the bluescreens continue or if I have a clear spell for about a week;

 

Great forum, whether any of this advice works or not I'll definately use this place again, and recommend it,

 

regards,

J.

Hopefully, after DerekT had you bump the VNBSB voltage, you're all set.

does anyone have any idea why I'm blue screening

 

 

If you passed memtest, then the issue is very likely external to the DRAM. Set your system to show a blue screen and halt at the blue screen. This will give you information.

 

Control Panel --> System --> Advanced --> Startup and Recovery --> Settings --> System Failure --> Uncheck "Automatically Restart" and then set the drop down box to show "Small memory Dump (64KB)

 

The next time you have a blue screen, write down the entire stop event. Then set your folders to show hidden files and folders. Go to your Windows folder and look for a sub-folder called "Minidump". You will find a file (s) there with the extension of .dmp. Insert some of the last files as attachments here.

Unfortunately I have had three bsods tonight, two while trying to install VS2005, I know this isn't compatible with Vista but with the SP1 update and then the Vista SP1 udate it does work, anyway it went bang on me twice trying to install and then again whilst I was trying to make the settings change that you suggested, I got there in the end and I've wrote this down (I've made the assumption that you do not want me to write the entire screen down);

 

--start--

 

A problem has been detected.....

 

A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval.

 

.....

 

Technial Information:

 

*** STOP: 0x00000101 (0x0000000000000061, 0x0000000000000000, 0xFFFFF98000A35180, 0x0000000000000001)

 

--end--

 

I've attached a zip file with the three dmp files from this evening, I'm hoping that I have recorded enough information from the blue screen for you, I really appreciate you taking the time to look at this, how can I do what I did earlier, download half a gig, loop a video, perform a full virus scan, had explorer open and was browsing with two ie windows, all simultaneously and flawlessly and not be able to install VS...

 

many, many thanks,

J.

Mini051608-02.zip

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929470/en-us

 

Might help, might not.

Run OCCT and enter the settings button, set the monitoring to "Built In" and choose 60C as the max CPU temp. Please post a screenshot of OCCT when OCCT has been running for ~10 minutes.

 

Are you running with onboard audio or an aftermarket card? What CPU cooler? What overclocks, if any? Have you tried a different hard drive? Are you running PATA or SATA?

 

Reinstall the OS. Do not install programs that you know are not compatible. How can you test for stability of the system overall when you do things like that?

I've entered the settings you recommended Derek and ran the test for a little over 10 minutes, the bmp is zipped and attached.

 

Are you running with onboard audio or an aftermarket card? What CPU cooler? What overclocks, if any? Have you tried a different hard drive? Are you running PATA or SATA?

 

Sound is an onboard Realtek, I've tried to lookup the chip version but device manager is not really telling me anything.

 

CPU cooler is an arctic cooling freezer 64 low profile, http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-025-AR&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=821

 

I've applied AS5 to it as recommended by the makers of as5, I put a spot about the size of a couple of grains of rice in the middle of the heat spreader, put the cooler on, turned it a little in each direction and then screwed it down onto the motherboard.

 

No overclocks at all on the cpu.

 

Haven't tried a different hard drive but I do have an ide 30gb ibm, I could try that?

 

Currently the hdd is a 250gb sata2 drive, Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache, http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-138-SE&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=768

 

If you feel I should reinstall the os Derek, I will gladly do that as I know you have taken time out to help someone you have never met before, I really do appreciate the help/advice that you and Gavin have given me, but please understand, VS 2005 is compatible with Vista but only after the General Visual Studio SP1 update and the Vista Visual Studio SP1 update, linked above by Gavin (thanks Gavin). It is a strange situation (chicken and egg) in which it is an application that has known compatibility issues with Vista but you cannot apply service packs until the actual app is on the machine, it has certainly never blue screened on vista before to my knowledge, once the service packs are applied you are good to go! Point taken though, given that I am in the middle of trying to sort this out it was perhaps wrong of me to install this at this time, sorry.

 

I have legal versions of vista business, xp32pro and xp64pro, I've installed all at different times over the last 4 months, several times, at least a dozen. I haven't activated vista business yet and I'm flip flopping between 32 and 64 bit. I do want to lean towards vista64 however, I am a software developer and would like to get used to developing with IIS 7, which is a server app' that is in vista, very different to iis 5.1 in xppro32 or iis 6 in xppro64 which is essentially windows server 2003 anyway.

 

If you would like me to try the IBM ide drive, or reinstall vista please let me know. It's maddening really, last night my machine was a piece of crap, today it has been running all day, vs 2005 is on now, vs-sp1'd and vista vs-sp1'd, I've even installed ut3 and done a quick instant action death match, detail levels 3 and 3 at 1440x900 (my max resolution), smooth as silk on my 3850 and not a single problem.

 

Additionally I have all updates and vista sp1 has been applied, once again thank you for your help with this stupid machine of mine.

 

kind regards,

J.

occt.zip

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929470/en-us

 

Might help, might not.

 

Appreciated Gavin, downloaded and installed :D:

 

kind regards,

J.

No problem. It just looked like there was two seperate issues: one hardware configuration issue and one Vista compatibility workaround.

Hi Garvin, yeah sorry about that, it didn't/doesn't look good I know.

 

I don't think there is a definitive answer unless something is found by running apps like memtest86 or occt etc, which both seems to say that my ram is fine and my cpu is ok peaking at about 55 degrees, I'd never heard of the occt program until DerekT pointed it out to me. I'm reasonable knowledgeable re hardware etc but i'm not in the same league as you guys, I know my way around software like VS, sql server, iis etc, it's my work, but cas latency etc...

 

If those two pieces of hardware have been eliminated and as far as I'm concerned the gfx card has been eliminated as I removed that, reformatted and used the onboard which still gave blue screens, I think I have found myself at a point now where I can just try some last ditch attempts at elimination.

 

For the most part now all my software is on, I'm lacking a few utils/apps now like resharper for vs2005 and my infragistics suite, then I can start using this thing and see how it goes.

 

I think there is only two other pieces of hardware to attempt to eliminate, my hdd and my wireless network card, it's a very simple system really.

 

I bought reasonable components like the 6400 black edition(no core2duo or core2quad but reasonable), decent ram and the hd3850 gfx card whilst the case and power supply are good too, good enough for this setup. The one area that I didn't spend much was this motherboard, I put a dirt cheap m-atx motherboard and dropped it into my case, I could have bought a full size atx 790fx chipset and probably wish that I had now.

 

Sorry I got your name wrong, I just saw your nickname and for some reason saw Gavin, once again I really have appreciated the help/advice that DerekT and yourself have given, I will of course keep you informed of my progress,

 

kind regards,

John C.

It is best to determine stability first. I would personally use another drive to install a fresh OS with no additional hardware other than drivers. I would also disable the onboard sound for testing. The dump files show a sound dump and an ata port dump. Are you using an optical drive with a PATA connection? If so, after the install, PATA connection and the optical drive for testing. You may have issues with that drive and/or chip. You may wish to look in your Event Viewer.

Do not be too hasty to install programs. Use a dual boot with your main hard drive and use it for as normal a use as you can. Then boot to the other drive and continue trouble shooting. If you gain errors on the main drive whilst no errors occur on the new one, then you can begin the isolation process of one software installed and fully tested.

In addition, Vista has another utility that may point to what's going on if the problems persist. Open up Windows Explorer, left-click on System Properties in the command bar towards the top of Explorer, left-click on the Windows Experience Index link in the center of the dialog box, and left-click on the Advanced tools link in the Tasks pane on the left side of the dialog box. Left-click on any of the links under "Performance issues" to get a more detailed account of the issue(s).

Hi DerekT and Garvin, I'd like to try to work through the issues with the machine in a methodical way, with this in mind I plan to reinstall the os on the ide drive that I have spare. I do not need a dual boot scenario as I have other systems available to me, this setup was going to be my main home pc for work and also a little play.

 

Are you using an optical drive with a PATA connection?

 

My dvd burner is a sata device like my hdd, in fact I had disabled the ide controller in the bios as no ide devices were present.

 

If so, after the install, PATA connection and the optical drive for testing.

 

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here?

 

Re the onboard hardware, I already disable the onboard 1394 as I don't need or want it, I will also disable the onboard sound and the onboard nic. Additionally I plan to use the onboard video as opposed to the discreet gfx card I have, my last remaining question re hardware to use is the wireless nic, I can omit this hardware but would be limited to running vista in its rtm state, unless vista sp1 can be downloaded and installed offline, but as I understand there are pre-requisite updates that need to be in place prior to sp1, if this can be done I will download and burn an iso or data file to disk prior to starting the fresh install. Will check that later.

 

I am not going to install any additional software, just drivers for my active hardware, namely the ati chipset and onboard graphics, I will of course install my wireless nic drivers if i have that card active too, I can't have it in the machine anyway as the installation notes clearly state that the drivers have to be on before the hardware is present.

 

 

My last remaining question is regarding elimination and testing, with the testing procedure I would imagine that I need to activate one piece of hardware at a time and then see how the pc performs stability wise, what length of time would you leave between each activation? and how would you test for stability? I plan to make the adjustments to vista as I have previously been advised, to make blue screens to NOT automatically reboot, and to save dump files to the minidump directory, do either of you think it advisable to install occt to allow testing of the cpu? The blue screens have been minutes apart or sometimes days so I would definitely lean towards a number of days between system alterations, if it takes me 2-3 weeks to get there so be it, I've had the hardware since xmas and am still not running a stable system so I can wait a bit longer.

 

kind regards,

John C.

You have no PATA connections, so it is a moot point. Regarding time of testing. However long it took to repeat the issues plus some extra time is preferable and my method. It's good that you have more than one single system and yes, activate one by one. Use the event viewer and Garvin's mentioned performance report as well to trouble shoot possible issues. OCCT is a good test of the CPU. Use it and test for ~8 hours. If no issues regarding CPU stability occur, and if you have tested with a clean Memtest outcome, then you have the peripheral and motherboard as culprits. Since it will be a totally clean install of only the OS, you will have isolated software as the issue.

DerekT, it would appear that I can indeed eliminate the wireless network card from my system, an SP1 download for Vista is available. Would you advise that I SP1 Vista or perform my testing under RTM conditions? Hopefully I'll leave you alone for a while after I've got this last little bit of advice,

 

many thanks to both DerekT and Garvin for your help,

John C.