Computer freezes with new memory.

[jinwk001]

Hi, I've recently built a new computer using some old parts and everything turned out great. Memory was a little low for todays standard so I decided to upgrade to 16gigs of ram from 4 gigs. After the upgrade I seem to get weird freezes during game play, videos, and downloading files. I have 4 sticks of 4gig G.Skilll DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz Dual channel F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL.
I've tried using just 2 sticks of ram at a time and still got freezes. I replaced the ram with my old sticks of 2gig corsair(total of 4 gigs) and don't have any problems.
My motherboard is a ASUS P7P55d-e LX and my processor is i7 870 2.93GHz. I have upgraded the motherboard bios to its latest firmware.
Is there anything I need to change in bios with the new ram? Perhaps change voltages or something? Any inputs appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[Elixer]

What are the specs of the old RAM ?

 

[ShintaiDK]

The memory should work out of the box. Did you fiddle with BIOS in the old days? Try reset your BIOS to default settings and see if any difference.

 

[VirtualLarry]

When you say "freezes", do you mean hard locks (mouse stops moving), or temporary pauses, like apps stop responding for 10 seconds?

You might have knocked a SATA cable partially loose, when you changed your memory.

 

[jinwk001]

The specs on my old ram is 2048MB 1600MHz CMD4GX3M2a1600C9.
By freeze I mean the screen is what it was last doing before it stopped. I hear no sound and I cannot move my mouse. I press the numlock button and nothing happens. Have to force restart using power button. Never messed with the bios expect update the firmware. The motherboard I bought new as well actually.

 

[Emulex]

the voltage of the new memory is what? 1.5V? 1.35V?

1.5V is max (lowest quality) that should be acceptable

 

[jinwk001]

Ok I've done a bit of trouble shooting to isolate the problem and have an update.
To start my original configuration was;
I7 870 2.93GHz CPU
Radeon 5850
ASUS P7P55d-e lx motherboard
4GB(2x2GB) 1600MHz Corsair Dominator
x2 Kingston HyperX 3K 120 GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 6.0 Gb/s Solid State Drive in Raid 0
1 7200 2TB Seagate harddrive
Standard CD/DVD Drive
Antec 620 Kuhler for cpu cooling
Wireless card
5 Case fans
600W Thermaltake PS.

Worked great although it had a little hiccup trying to boot when first powering on. It would power on, fans start spinning, then turn off for like 1 second then turn back on fully operational. Upgraded the RAM and then it all started...

Seems like the problem most occurs when I am trying to watch a video on youtube/netflix.
I have other programs running in the background. Haven't had time to extensively test while gaming but I will do that next.

So now I have tried replacing the video card with a GTX 550 TI.

I even put the old ram back in and still get freezes(Although I got freezes before the ram upgrade when watching netflix but I assumed that was a netflix specific problem due to lack of ram because I could play league of legends for 8 hrs straight and have done OCCT CPU test for 4 hours before without freezes)

I thought it maybe a power issue so I unplugged 3 case fans, the spare 7200rpm hd, and the CD drive. (Fix the delay boot problem but no the freezing problem)

I've tried using the new G.Skill ram in both 4 and 2 stick configuration using the proper slots according to the motherboard manual. Haven't tried 1 slot config yet...

Seems to always freeze after putting on a 720p Video on youtube for around 10 - 15 minutes while dling a game on steam. (This has been my usual way to test for freezes after any config changes)

I thought maybe it could be that the onboard sound was stealing too much resources and tried adding my Creative X-Fi soundcard when I unpluged the 3case fans,HD, and Cd drive. Still got freezes.

Right now I do not have a youtube video running or any downloads and I was able to finish my post without my computer freezing. I do have OCCT running CPU: Linpack with 90% memory use so far for 30 minutes without any freezing issues although the computer is a bit sluggish which is to be expected.

I've burned the memtest86 iso image to a cd and tried doing the test but cant seem to get it to work. I get to the Memtest86 screen where I have to choose 1 for memtest v4.0 or 2 for memtest 3.5 and after I choose 1 it says "Memtest loaded... Ready" then just stops.
I've tried pressing every key on my keyboard and waiting 10 minutes with no response.

I will continue to run OCCT test but I dont think its the CPU. Both of my GPUs could be broken and im starting to think its not a memory issue. Maybe power? Why doesn't it freeze while I'm doing the test though? Its got to be more resource extensive than a youtube video.

Any tests I can conduct to better isolate this issue? Has anyone had a similar problem?

Also to answer Emulex's question, yes it is 1.5V for the memory. Are you asking what it is set in the bios as? What should I set it to in bios?

Anyways thanks for the replys. I'm really baffled and quite frustrated with this issue. Really gives me a headache. Really makes me consider buying a MAC

 

[Emulex]

check that the system is actually running the ram at the right voltage and speed.

Drop the ram speed down to see if it stabilizes or rma the memory.

 

[jinwk001]

Update.
Checked the voltages and speed. Both look correct. 1600 and 1.5V.
I will test the lower ram speed but I still seem to get the freezes with my old ram when watching movies just left often.
Any video whether its streamed online or a HD video file causes freezes most often. Happens after watching for about 10-15 minutes.
Played league of legends for 5 hours with no freeze.
Played counter strike for about an hour before I got a freeze.
After that I did a OCCT test using the power supply test. Rendering a graphic model at 1920 x 1200 for 2 hours using 100% resources WHILE leaving a download on WITHOUT a freeze. Im kind of confused here...What is the difference between playing a video file and rendering graphics? I can post results if requested.
Does this seem like a graphics card issue to anyone? I will do another GPU and leave it on while I sleep.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Youtube video uses flash. Make sure flash and GFX drivers are fully updated. And/or try disable flash hardware acceleration.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Use Memtest86+. The "plus" is important.