fbrandau Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 Hello, first - I actually have no interest in overclocking my system, my main intention is to make use of the 1600MHz for my memory, thats it. I will change what is necessary to achieve that, but everything on top I consider unnecessary. Second, I do not have experience in overclocking at all, please, if you post an explanation, make sure someone like me can understand it ;): My new machine is basically build from scratch and still far from complete (lots of colorful boxes around me). I decided to make one step at a time, with memory being rather early in that process. So currently I have a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5, the BIOS flashed to the F4 release version with a i7-940 processor and one module from the 3x2GByte kit TR3X6G1600C8D. The other two are still in their box until my problem is solved. There is only an optical drive attached, no hard discs yet (although I used the machine to flash a bunch of the most famous Seagate 1TB drives). On factory settings with the RAM operating at 1033 MHz, everything works nice as far as I can currently tell. But of course that is missing the additional speed I can get out of that high quality memory (not my first Corsairs, I like this company). I decided to activate the profile1 for X.M.P., but then, problems started. After cold boot, the systems is acting strange, fans are spinning up but after a couple of seconds, power is turned of, there seems to be some kind of reset with the fans stopping and all leds going off. After that it boots nicely and stops at hard disc boot attempt (simple - no hard disc). During flashing my drives, i encountered one situation, where the motherboard hanged on boot attempt, not continuing into the error message that the disc is not bootable. I had to reset the computer and after that, some corruption on BIOS level was detected due to "overclocking". The board did some work including setting my RAM back to 1033MHz. There was only one occassion where that happened. Reading through the forums and searching the internet, I decided that the factory settings for the DRAM voltage might not be sufficient and set this one to 1.640V. Still, the mysterious reset after cold boot happens. So I disabled XMP again and set DRAM voltage to Auto, I just don't have the knowledge to tamper with any more settings. Now my questions are: What is that reset after cold boot when activating XMP, can it damage my system or is there a way to prevent that? Is the BIOS F4 sufficient for the XMP profile or do I need to go to a beta BIOS? What settings are necessary in the BIOS to make the RAM plus environment work reliable? Thanks a lot for all help! Kind regards, Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerekT Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 All you should have to do is set your System Memory Multiplier to 12 and your DRAM Voltage to 1.64. XMP is often problematic at this new stage and I forgo it completely. Download Memtest Version 2.11 from--->Hereand extract the ISO image. Burn the ISO image to an CD-ROM disk. Download CPU-z from Here . After setting the above values, boot to the Memtest CD and allow a few passes. If stable, enter Windows and please post screenshots of CPU-z's CPU, Memory and SPD tabs. You have set the DRAM to Slots 2, 4 and 6? When enabling 3 Channel mode with three memory modules, be sure to install them in the DDR3_1, DDR3_3 and DDR3_5 sockets. Slots 2, 4, and 6 are the white slots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fbrandau Posted January 24, 2009 Author Share Posted January 24, 2009 On my board, memory slot 1, 3 and 5 are the white ones and the memory module is currently in Slot 1. Slot order is 2-1-4-3-6-4 beginning with blue counting from the processor socket. At least according to the manual. Manually setting the multiplier to 12 and the DRAM voltage to 1.64 again resulted in the strange short 'shutdown' after cold boot (Fans work, system boots - Fans stop, all LEDs off - Everything starts again and then continues to boot). Memtest is working now. Kind regards, Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerekT Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 That shutdown is built into both Core2 and i7 products. It is a testing procedure. Don't worry about it. I would check to be certain that your DRAM order is correct. the second, fourth and sixth slots are tuned for higher performance and should be used. On my board, memory slot 1, 3 and 5 are the white ones and the memory module is currently in Slot 1. Slot order is 2-1-4-3-6-4 beginning with blue counting from the processor socket. At least according to the manual. Manually setting the multiplier to 12 and the DRAM voltage to 1.64 again resulted in the strange short 'shutdown' after cold boot (Fans work, system boots - Fans stop, all LEDs off - Everything starts again and then continues to boot). Memtest is working now. Kind regards, Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fbrandau Posted January 25, 2009 Author Share Posted January 25, 2009 That shutdown is built into both Core2 and i7 products. It is a testing procedure. Don't worry about it. I would check to be certain that your DRAM order is correct. the second, fourth and sixth slots are tuned for higher performance and should be used. I think we are getting on common ground now :D: Hope this explains it better, this is where my memory is located in Layout: Processor | Memory Slot 1 | Memory Slot 2 | Memory Slot 3 | Memory Slot 4 | Memory Slot 5 | Memory Slot 6 Socket: ......... | DDR3_2 Blue.. | DDR3_1 White. | DDR3_4 Blue.. | DDR3_3 White. | DDR3_6 Blue.. | DDR3_5 White. Memory: ......... | ............. | TR3X6G1600C8D | ............. | ............. | ............. | ............. I was talking about the slot labeled DDR3_1, you seem to be talking about the physical location on the board (the second slot counting up from the processor position). Why is that short disruption only happening when using 1600MHz and not with 1033MHz? Is the processor aware of "overclocking"? Sorry if I insist too much, but I always try to understand my hardware as good as I can and yes, I worry a lot... after 26 years of working with computers my only target is to have a stable system and for that, you need a lot of background knowledge. Kind regards, Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerekT Posted January 25, 2009 Share Posted January 25, 2009 you seem to be talking about the physical location on the board (the second slot counting up from the processor position). Correct. Why is that short disruption only happening when using 1600MHz and not with 1033MHz? Is the processor aware of "overclocking"? Yes, the processor is aware that different values are entered, the processor is running out of it's known spec and since you have some Auto values, it inserts values for the BIOS that are different and that will help to bring stability in the overclock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fbrandau Posted January 25, 2009 Author Share Posted January 25, 2009 Yes, the processor is aware that different values are entered, the processor is running out of it's known spec and since you have some Auto values, it inserts values for the BIOS that are different and that will help to bring stability in the overclock. Clever processor... if I understand you correctly, the board will boot, see the adjustements, set new values and reboots for the values to be active. In this case, if I would enter the bios and enter the new values instead of the AUTO setting, the reboot would not take place? Is there any way to identify which values have been changed? Kind regards, Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerekT Posted January 25, 2009 Share Posted January 25, 2009 Clever processor... if I understand you correctly, the board will boot, see the adjustements, set new values and reboots for the values to be active. You've got it right. In this case, if I would enter the bios and enter the new values instead of the AUTO setting, the reboot would not take place? Is there any way to identify which values have been changed? The reboot pretty much always takes place with extended values. The system will still do an enumeration of the BIOS to ensure stability. I use a program called Everest Ultimate Edition. The defacto standard for reporting on your system components. A Great benchmark test suite as well. Download Everest Trial Version from here -->Here Install Everest and right click on the (i) icon in the system tray. Choose Tools --> Cache and Memory Benchmark. Run the Benchmark. Since you want to know so much, I advise you to move on to http://www.xtremesystems.org where you can learn much more about the Enthusiast reactivity of hardware. This site is geared towards helping people to trouble-shoot possibly malfunctioning DRAM. I use xtremesystems for my knowledgebase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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