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Asus Striker II Extreme MB, Corsair Memory good choice?


Morbius

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Every PC I've ever owned was purchased pre-built. I'm ready for a new PC now, and when I couldn't find exactly what I wanted in any pre-built machine, I decided it might be time to try building one myself. Keep in mind that my idea in doing this really wasn't to save a lot of money, but just to see if I could put together what I think are all the best parts myself.

 

So with that being said, all of the hardware I listed in my profile here isn't really what I currently have, but what I am planning on buying. So you can see I'm looking at the Asus Striker II Extreme, and with either Corsair TW3X4G2000C9DF, or perhaps TW3X4G1800C8DF.

 

But then I took a look at the forums here, and got a little scared...seems there's quite a few posts talking about all kinds of problems involving this motherboard and Corsair Dominator modules. I realize that any forum will have mostly the people who've had bad experiences posting, but considering the costs of these components, I'd like to get a little reassurance as to how this will all work!

 

As I said, this will be my first built-from-scratch PC, and I do not have any real experience at "tweaking" BIOS settings, overclocking, etc., though I would like to learn. I am fairly fluent in PCs in general, but not to the level of things like overclocking. So what I want, and NEED to happen first is for everything to plug together, start up clean, and not have any stability issues whatsoever. In other words, I want it to at least run 100% stable with no tweaking right out of the box. Once that's accomplished, I can then at least try to learn more about getting more out of all the components with tweaks later.

 

So there's the story...if I buy the Striker II Extreme, and Corsair TW3X4G2000C9DF, will these go together cleanly and run fine right out of the box, with NO stability problems, and no "tweaking"? If not, would the TW3X4G1800C8DF kit be better in this respect? What I've read seems to indicate that these Corsair modules are actually designed primarily to run with this specific motherboard, and that thanks to their EPP capability, should allow the motherboard to pretty much set everything up optimally on it's own. But the various posts talking about how they can't get the board to boot, or how it crashes frequently, and how they have to keep tweaking settings just trying to get a stable machine is scaring the $%&* out of me!

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But then I took a look at the forums here, and got a little scared...seems there's quite a few posts talking about all kinds of problems involving this motherboard and Corsair Dominator modules. I realize that any forum will have mostly the people who've had bad experiences posting, but considering the costs of these components, I'd like to get a little reassurance as to how this will all work!
This is a TECHNICAL SUPPORT forum. Happy people don't have a reason to post here :)
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The MB and memory settings would need to be tweaked for any of our modules and any module over DDR1333 would be over clocking and out XM3S-2000 modules would be an extreme over clock for any MB but with the latest BIOS and an E8000 series CPU it should be no problem at all but with a Q9770 I would suggest TWIN3X4096-1600C7DHX for best performance.
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Whoa...now I really am confused! I thought that by spending mucho denaro on the Asus Striker II Extreme, I would be getting the best MB for running Corsair's best memory, which I thought was the Dominator line. Reviews of your memory, and of that MB, all seemed to indicate the Striker II Extreme and Dominator memory were almost designed for each other. But the kit you recommend for it is in your XMS, or "mainstream" line??

 

Help me understand why you recommended this XMS kit over the two Dominator kits I referenced. And if you could, please explain to me exactly what the EPP function of your memory is supposed to do, as I must not understand it right. I thought if I bought one of your higher bandwidth Dominator kits, like the two I asked about, that the EPP function of these modules would actually cause the motherboard to put the right BIOS settings in place to run them at their stated speeds, with no "tweaking" on my part. But your answer seemed to indicate that I WOULD have to do some tweaking if I purchased either of those kits.

 

And note that I don't mind going into the BIOS to set a few settings here and there, as long as it's clear what they are, and what they need to be set to. What I don't want to have to do is spend a week of changing things, rebooting, testing, and changing again just to get a stable system. That might be ok if I wanted to do some serious overclocking later...but to start with, I really just want to be able to plug the modules in and have the system run, at the memory's stated speed and timings, without any stability problems.

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The CPU and Memory run in a ratio. With Intel CPUs there must be a CPU to Memory ratio of at least 1:1. So, you would need a 500Mhz FSB CPU to run with the 2000Mhz DRAM in a 1:1 ratio. This is overclocking DRAM. The QX9770 runs with a 400Mhz (1600Mhz QUAD Pumped) FSB and thus the DRAM would need to be 800Mhz (1600Mhz DDR) to create that 1:1 relationship.

 

If you were looking to overclock and wanted the headroom then the 2000Mhz DRAM running at 1600Mhz would also work. Then later on you could work on an overclock knowing that you had the DRAM headroom. However, a 500Mhz FSB is not likely and you might find no greater than 425 - 450Mhz on the FSB which would bring you to ~1800Mhz on the DRAM. So, rather than throw money away, if you intend on running stock, the 1600Mhz DRAM is the way to go and if you intend on doing the overclock sometime, then the 1800Mhz DRAM would be enough as I doubt you would make greater than 450Mhz on the CPU.

 

Hopefully this is a little more clear.

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Thanks! That actually helps quite a bit...I knew a little about the FSB speed being related to both the CPU and memory, but I didn't really know about tje QX9770 being pretty much limited to 400mhz, or only slightly more. I assume then that there must be other CPUs that, while not as powerful out of the box as the QX9770, must run on a bus speed faster than 400mhz, which is what the 2000 speed memory is actually meant for?

 

I do like your suggestion of going no higher than 1800 for the memory, allowing me at least the opportunity to try a little overclocking if so inclined later on.

 

So with all that being said, can you tell me how the 1800 Corsair memory with EPP will react when first plugged into a Striker II Extreme? Does it cause the MB to automatically adjust all BIOS settings to run the memory at 1800, or would it default to 1600, and require me to do something manual to get it to it's full rated speed?

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Thanks! That actually helps quite a bit...I knew a little about the FSB speed being related to both the CPU and memory, but I didn't really know about tje QX9770 being pretty much limited to 400mhz, or only slightly more. I assume then that there must be other CPUs that, while not as powerful out of the box as the QX9770, must run on a bus speed faster than 400mhz, which is what the 2000 speed memory is actually meant for?

 

Some 45nm C0 Quads do make higher than 425 but seldom make higher than 450. Mine makes 423 but I keep it at 400 and 4.0Ghz,

 

I do like your suggestion of going no higher than 1800 for the memory, allowing me at least the opportunity to try a little overclocking if so inclined later on.

 

So with all that being said, can you tell me how the 1800 Corsair memory with EPP will react when first plugged into a Striker II Extreme? Does it cause the MB to automatically adjust all BIOS settings to run the memory at 1800, or would it default to 1600, and require me to do something manual to get it to it's full rated speed?

 

I don't think you understood my previous post. You have a 1600Mhz fsb processor which needs a 1600Mhz DRAM speed for the 1:1 ratio. You still need to set the BIOS to the EPP read and the CPU link to the DRAM, Then it is supposed to link the 1600MHz FSB CPU to 1600MHz DRAM. It won't set to 1800MHz on the DRAM unless you change the FSB value to 450MHz or unlink the ratio. I do not use the EPP settings as I find that what they are supposed to do is not often what they in point of fact do.

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