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Corsair vengeance LPX DDR4, RMA'd and yet more issues!


demonic186

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As title says I've been having nothing but bother, I originally RMA'd two kits of 2x4Gb DDR4 Vengeance LPX 3000Mhz RAM - making a total 4x4Gb sticks - when these were in my system I received nothing but memory errors, windows crashes etc.

 

So, 14+ days later I received a new lot of RAM this morning via RMA and low and behold this has issues too - not memory errors or crashes etc but a rather irritating one that has just been annoying the hell out of me - it will not run past 2800mhz when all four sticks are installed either via XMP or manual timings as suggested here on the forum - these are on the QVL for my motherboard and my CPU - 6700k, I should note that the previous lot of 4x4gb sticks I sent back all ran at the rated 3000mhz with my CPU mildly OC'd to 4.4ghz using just the XMP setting.

 

I've tested for hours on end and this RAM you sent me as replacement will only run at 3000mhz when only one individual kit is installed - in short, runs good when I just put one kit of 2x4Gb sticks in - in any configuration with the RAM channels - this is the case for either kit. But all four sticks together? nah they don't place nice at all!

 

Not happy and well, the RMA service was a total shambles - no updates and constantly having to contact your customer service team via live chat or skype was a nightmare when 1) you're in the UK 2) neither customer service person I spoke to knew how to help or what was going on with my RMA's

 

Because it was two separate kits purchased at two separate times your support team thought it best to handle them individually - two RMA's for the RAM kits, which was irritating as all hell to keep track of, the codes for these should any corsair rep wish to look into it was 660413 and 661178

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I've tested for hours on end and this RAM you sent me as replacement will only run at 3000mhz when only one individual kit is installed - in short, runs good when I just put one kit of 2x4Gb sticks in - in any configuration with the RAM channels - this is the case for either kit. But all four sticks together? nah they don't place nice at all!

 

This is why you are not supposed to combine kits and use the XMP preset. You are going to have to do it the hard way and overclock manually. You have not listed the kit or your hardware specs, but obviously it is Skylake and 3000 is a sticking point for a lot of mid-range Z170 hardware. You are going to need to read up on the expected ranges for your board. System Agent voltage and CPU VCCIO are key, in addition to the normal DRAM voltage and timings.

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This is why you are not supposed to combine kits and use the XMP preset. You are going to have to do it the hard way and overclock manually. You have not listed the kit or your hardware specs, but obviously it is Skylake and 3000 is a sticking point for a lot of mid-range Z170 hardware. You are going to need to read up on the expected ranges for your board. System Agent voltage and CPU VCCIO are key, in addition to the normal DRAM voltage and timings.

 

I have tried manual settings too, I'm currently using a gigabyte GA-Z170-X Gaming 3 motherboard, i7 6700k CPU - as stated in my original comment I had this PC setup and working just fine before with two of these 2x4Gb kits combined and had zero issues with it running at 3000mhz with both manual settings and XMP settings.

 

Can't do that with this bundle at all and have tried various settings - my board is rated to run ram upto 3466Mhz, this ram is supposed to be compatible with this board.

 

It's rather silly that you cannot combine 4 sticks of 4Gb ram when perhaps you might buy a 2x4Gb kit and want to upgrade with another 2x4Gb kit later - you should not have to go out and specifically buy a box of ram that states it's 2x8gb or 4x4gb and sell whatever is currently in your system.. that's just nonsense.

 

The normal DRAM voltage for these kits is 1.35V - 15-17-17-35 timings, I have tried various different timings as posted on this forum from other users having issues setting the speed at it's rated maximum.

 

The point is that the previous two separate kits worked together fine despite the irritating memory errors that showed up in memtest - why can't these two kits just get along? it's bloody daft.

 

The kit number is CMK8GX4M2B3000C15R - both are version 5.20 as stated on the ram sticks.

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It's rather silly that you cannot combine 4 sticks of 4Gb ram when perhaps you might buy a 2x4Gb kit and want to upgrade with another 2x4Gb kit later - you should not have to go out and specifically buy a box of ram that states it's 2x8gb or 4x4gb and sell whatever is currently in your system.. that's just nonsense.

 

The point is that the previous two separate kits worked together fine despite the irritating memory errors that showed up in memtest - why can't these two kits just get along? it's bloody daft.

 

Take this up with the Universe and/or your Solid States Physics professor. It's not a global conspiracy. It's the properties of semiconductor materials. Your two prior kits did not get along and you had errors. You should have none. Now you have two new kits. Every kit is somewhat unique. Sometimes you get lucky and they are well matched. Sometimes you are going to loose a week's sleep. This is further complicated by the 3000 frequency which seems to be hard for a lot of Z170 boards. You are not alone. Also note that when your motherboard manufacturer states the board "supports" a specific frequency, that does not mean you can actually run it. It means they made that frequency selectable in the BIOS as an option. You are one of the many people to fall into the trap and if you want to take issue with that, I agree. It is not exactly forthright. At least GA is not so brazen as to show your board running 5.1 and 4000MHz like some other brands.

 

I suspect you are pushing the upper limit for that board and dual kits is the monkey wrench. This is a lot of work and not something we can give list of specific settings for. A lot of Z170 boards have auto SA and VCCIO voltages that are too high when XMP is enabled. Depending on what those values are, you may need to lower them. If it comes down to setting tertiary timings, I wish you luck.

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Take this up with the Universe and/or your Solid States Physics professor. It's not a global conspiracy. It's the properties of semiconductor materials. Your two prior kits did not get along and you had errors. You should have none. Now you have two new kits. Every kit is somewhat unique. Sometimes you get lucky and they are well matched. Sometimes you are going to loose a week's sleep. This is further complicated by the 3000 frequency which seems to be hard for a lot of Z170 boards. You are not alone. Also note that when your motherboard manufacturer states the board "supports" a specific frequency, that does not mean you can actually run it. It means they made that frequency selectable in the BIOS as an option. You are one of the many people to fall into the trap and if you want to take issue with that, I agree. It is not exactly forthright. At least GA is not so brazen as to show your board running 5.1 and 4000MHz like some other brands.

 

I suspect you are pushing the upper limit for that board and dual kits is the monkey wrench. This is a lot of work and not something we can give list of specific settings for. A lot of Z170 boards have auto SA and VCCIO voltages that are too high when XMP is enabled. Depending on what those values are, you may need to lower them. If it comes down to setting tertiary timings, I wish you luck.

 

Be that as it may this was never an issue with any other DDR1/2/3 RAM out there and you could happily add another stick of X amount of RAM providing it was the same brand, speed and timings. Not being able to do this with DDR4 seems pretty daft - that can't be denied, it limits the option of "oh I'll get 8gb now and 8gb later" greatly.

 

What I failed to mention is that any one of the four previous sticks gave me the memory errors and crashes - when just one was inserted, tested in each slot - rinse and repeat.

 

The replacement hasn't gave me any errors it's purely the speed not going to what it's rated too and supposed to go too is a little infuriating considering my last lot did without a fuss.

 

This does not appear to be any way of manually adjusting the VCCIO voltages and such.

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The motherboard/BIOS maker determines the SA and VCCIO voltages, normally depending on frequency. The XMP profile does not address those values. That would be fantastic if this is all it takes.

 

with XMP enabled the VCCIO sits at 0.960 and SA goes way high to 1.280 - with XMP disabled + the VCCIO sits at to 1.000 and SA at 1.060

 

So as a result of this I've currently got XMP enabled but the voltages manually dialed in to the default 1.000 for VCCIO and SA to 1.060 - ran all the stress tests under the sun for approx 1-2 hours each and have not encountered any system hangs, crashes or high temps.

 

I've left the CPU cores at default 4ghz with intels standard turbo boost and have got the vcore stable at 1.225v max or there abouts - it only uses that amount under heavy load and of course boosts to 4.2ghz - power/eco setting thing.

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That is interesting. It seems GA tied the SA/VCCIO boost to enabling XMP rather than directly to frequency. Asus is notorious for extreme values on the auto settings, no XMP required.

 

Well, this all sounds much better. I am glad it is working without needing to address the sub-timings.

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