Windows 7 RAM issue

[flair]

Hi there! i have a problem which is not directly linked to windows 7 but after browsing this forum a little it appears to me that you guys have quite some knowledge and might be able to tell me what to do, i would really appreciate your help!

for some time now i had some problems which i blamed the overclocking of my system for. i am running Win7 on an ASUS P5K Deluxe with an E6300, ASUS 8600GTS and 2x1GB Kingston DDR2 9200.
so for some time its been like i booted, it said "overclocking failed, please enter bios setup" and all i had to do was press F10 to save bios without any change and reboot to make it work again. Then after some time this didnt work anymore so i tried alot of stuff including resetting CMOS for 30min. so i narrowed it down to a hardware problem. first try was only using 1 of my 2 1GB RAM modules and it only worked with one of them.

since kingston has 10year warranty i shipped the one module and ordered another Kingston 2x1GB DDR2 8500 RAM modules (i couldnt get the 9200 ones anywhere). so for the last week i was running those 2 together with my remaining 9200 module and it worked fine, even with CPU OC.

so today i rebooted, passed BIOS POST messages and windows was about to boot, but nothing happened, screen stayed black. I tried safemode and it stopped at some driver so i enabled boot logging. again after 3min the screen was still black so i rebooted to start mini windows xp from hirens boot disk (v10.00) but i got the same black screen. i tried some mem tests from the disk and they all stopped working at some point. i tried rebooting with win7 and i didnt even get to the boot options, only blackscreen.

so again i tried removing my remaining 9200 module and it worked again... what a mess.
so what happened to those two modules?! what should i do with the second 9200 module?
my only idea is that it got a too high voltage, because i set it manually in the bios before i got problems for the first time. but i only set it to 2.35v (the specifications say 2.3-2.35v).

 

[cybercore]

Hi flair,

do you have the same RAM problem without overclocking ?

Did you try ASUS AI Non-Delay Overclocking System™ ? It is efficient and safer than overclocking manually.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reset your bios to the default values. If it doesn't help then manually adjust a few timing settings mentioned by your memory package, e.g.


CAS-tRCD-tRP-tRAS

2 - 2 - 2 - 5

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do reasonable overclocking gradually, watch for temperatures, and note that overclocking can lead to loosing hardware warranty.

 

[ickymay]

I wouldn't risk running two sticks of ram with different spec overclocked, for speed more ram is always better than faster so I would be tempted to get another 2x1GB DDR2 8500 RAM module and sell the 9200 .......

 

[flair]

hello and thanks for your answers!
maybe i should have mentioned that i did not overclock my ram at any point of time. i just heard that it would be better to manually specify the ram timings in the bios to avoid having them set to some slow "safety settings" or whatever.

when your talking about the AI suite i am already using it, works great. though i also have the problems with bios settings reset. resetting is the first thing i try when something goes wrong like this.
so what do you have any clue what might cause the problem? are the ram modules actually damaged? what about the warranty, shall i send the second module to the manufacturer as well?

 

[cybercore]

See if the "damaged" module works on the slot where sits the module that works.

 

[ickymay]

hello and thanks for your answers!
maybe i should have mentioned that i did not overclock my ram at any point of time. i just heard that it would be better to manually specify the ram timings in the bios to avoid having them set to some slow "safety settings" or whatever.

when your talking about the AI suite i am already using it, works great. though i also have the problems with bios settings reset. resetting is the first thing i try when something goes wrong like this.
so what do you have any clue what might cause the problem? are the ram modules actually damaged? what about the warranty, shall i send the second module to the manufacturer as well?

no sorry no suggestion you overclocked your ram but you are or have been overclocking your system and this I reckon is risky with two sticks of ram with different spec

I would drop the timings to something slower to see if you can get them stabilized but otherwise I would definitely try to get matching sticks

 

[cybercore]

Ickymay is right. Sometimes different spec ram modules just don't work together, even without any overclocking.