OC FAIL! Fix my computer for +internets

[Jysin-DW]

A bit of a WARNING:

Reflashing your BIOS with an unstable system is NOT a good idea. If your update fails, it can brick your bios chip and you will be left with no other option than to replace the BIOS chip or send the motherboard in to the manufacturer. You will be left unable to boot whatsoever.

Like Twobit suggested, try and get your RAM timings within spec in BIOS settings before anything else.

[Lowk]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

I think that's the likely case. Your board and CPU are pretty old and your RAM is fairly new. Ideally the board should detect the specs but for some reason it isn't. I would really try a flash update, but if your system is unstable and could crash during it you would brick it and need a new mobo.

The real problem is your timings. You are overclocking the memory beyond its defaults and it doesn't like it. Without a way to change it I don't know if it will work at all. You can try running everything at safe/auto and see if that adjusts it. Flashing may help detect it.. or it may just be incompatible with that board.

I had been running what options i could at auto up until starting this thread. While waiting on a response, i flashed the bios. Unfortunately there are no addition options form what i had previously. So, looks like i am shelving my ram until i can do a proper upgrade. Thanks for the help everyone.

[Jysin-DW]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

...Actually the website says it only supports up to DDR2 533MHZ, so that would be the problem...

That shouldnt be a problem. The motherboard will run at the slower speed and the RAM will simply run slower than rated spec. You just need to get into your bios and slow that ram down and loosen the latency timings manually. Uf your BIOS wont let you change it, youre a bit screwed. Sorry.

[Erumaron]

Originally Posted by Jysin-DW

That shouldnt be a problem. The motherboard will run at the slower speed and the RAM will simply run slower than rated spec. You just need to get into your bios and slow that ram down and loosen the latency timings manually. Uf your BIOS wont let you change it, youre a bit screwed. Sorry.

He could probably underclock it with that 200 setting he does have and it might work at those timings but that's certainly less than ideal.

[Silence]

Not an uncommon problem when populating all slots on a mainboard.

A good fix is to go into the BIOS to the RAM section and increase the voltage to your RAM, since not all mainboards can cope with full slots at spec voltage.

Also, on Gigabyte mainboards, hit Ctrl+F1 while in the BIOS to bring up hidden options.

[brekk]

Originally Posted by Silence

Not an uncommon problem when populating all slots on a mainboard.

A good fix is to go into the BIOS to the RAM section and increase the voltage to your RAM, since not all mainboards can cope with full slots at spec voltage.

Also, on Gigabyte mainboards, hit Ctrl+F1 while in the BIOS to bring up hidden options.

Yeah ummm I'd be a little more careful then just going in and cranking up the voltage, turning up voltage and not being careful about it is how you ruin parts.

[Silence]

Originally Posted by brekk

Yeah ummm I'd be a little more careful then just going in and cranking up the voltage, turning up voltage and not being careful about it is how you ruin parts.

Yeah, ummmm, not really. Tenths out of spec means exactly nothing in light of voltage drop. See this? probably not. Populating all the DIMM slots causes spec voltage to drop across all memory slots causing weird lockups...over volting the RAM merely brings the voltage back into spec...following me now?

I've only done this on a few hundred machines, not like the one or two that you haven't done it on, yet read on a forum that somebody did that you didn't do yet had some random failure on.

The best way of ruining parts is by sending good parts back on the advice of people that have no idea what they are talking about.

[Silence]

Originally Posted by brekk

Yeah ummm I'd be a little more careful then just going in and cranking up the voltage, turning up voltage and not being careful about it is how you ruin parts.

Forgot to add, been running several years on overvolted ram across a few hundred machines...

...disc failures lead the lot. Way way down the list are RAM failures, at something like 2%.

Oh noze!

[brekk]

I'm not saying that turning up the voltage is a bad thing, if you know what you are doing.

But just telling someone to "crank it up" with no advice on intervals to use, how to check stability, etc. is just asking for trouble.

[Silence]

Originally Posted by brekk

I'm not saying that turning up the voltage is a bad thing, if you know what you are doing.

But just telling someone to "crank it up" with no advice on intervals to use, how to check stability, etc. is just asking for trouble.

The BIOS should not allow dangerous over volting of RAM, at least on a Gigabyte product.