dual channel caused instability story

[rmed64]

I just upgraded to 2GB RAM. Everything was going good for a couple hours until I started getting crashes.

Hmmm, maybe my new stick of RAM was bad.

Tested that, and it was fine in memtest. Could it have been my overclock? What about the DIMM slot?

After 2 hours of troubleshooting, I found out that Dual Channel was causing system instability. Same model memory from same maker.

However, it seems the actual memory chips are different.

Just a heads up to those that may have a similar problem. I thought I would have to do an RMA.

Thankfully I don't....I just use single channel which shows no noticeable performance loss.

I guess they have dual channel kits for a reason huh?

 

[Sandan]

Hmm....How did you determine that the Dual Channel was causing instability? I was overclocking with 4 sticks of 512 RAM (PC3200) set at Dual Channel and kept getting crashes. Randomly and frequently the crash involved a black screen with the message "A disk read error occurred press control alt delete to restart". I researched this error but couldn't fix it until I stopped overclocking.

 

[Conky]

Dual channel can be a bit tricky, as you've found out, with differing RAM sticks and the assorted chips manufacturers use on their brands.

Your mobo runs an Nvidia chipset which is not as forgiving as some of the newer Intel mobo chipsets. I have 2 different brands of RAM and 2 different sizes of stick(3GB total) and they are all working quite well together in dual channel and overclocked on a P965 chipset board. :beer:

 

[rmed64]

Update:

It seems it wasn't the dual channel after all. I thought it was and everything ran fine for a bit. Then it started happening again.

Well it turns out my CPU was "overheating" and the safety shutdown setting from bios kicked into effect.

My CPU currently runs hot overclocked to 2.8GHz. Running orthos it can even exceed 70 degrees celsius right now in the summer without the A/C being on in my room. Bios was set to shutdown over 70 degrees, hence the "crashing" I thought I was getting.

For now I have turned off the temperature shutdown in bios until I can get a good after market cooler for it.

It now runs perfectly fine in Dual Channel memory configuration.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Don't be surprised if your mobo is misreporting your CPU temps. I don't use the same board you do, but my board simply can not report the CPU temp properly (Abit NF-M2 nView)

 

[Dahak]

check you heatsink mount as well , I've seen it happen on the p4s where it looks like its mounted correctly but its off a bit, have seen it personally on the 939/am2 sockets but it could be that cause too