Help! Changing Memory Timings

ArtShapiro

Member
May 6, 2011
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I'm a novice when it comes to this area, so be gentle!

A new 2500K mini-ITX machine has been running smoothly for six days. It is using the Intel DH67CF board, inbuilt Sandy Bridge video, with 8 gigs of GSkill memory. Nice machine - Sata III SSD and a DVDRW drive all packed into a little Antec 310-150 case. Haven't gotten it above 109 watts out of the wall yet.

As I'd shelled out for premium 7-7-7-21 memory, and knowing that Sandy Bridge boards always default to 9-9-9-24, I decided the machine had proved its stability and it was time to dial in the "correct" settings. So I booted up, went into BIOS settings, and in the "performance" tab switched the memory out of automatic configuration mode and OK'ed the "are you sure" warning.

I changed the four settings in question to my intended values. I observed that the board was using 1.500 volts as expected. I saved the settings and rebooted, happily awaiting an even faster machine.

It was a disaster. The machine would light up and start spinning fans for a half second, power down, and repeat the process. Let's just say that neither the machine nor I were very happy campers.

I pulled the machine apart and pulled the memory, hoping I could boot up into the BIOS config screen, but it would simply give a beep code and not get that far. So I moved the BIOS jumper into the configuration position, and was able to come up. I changed the memory settings back to "Automatic" and saved those settings. I put everything back together and powered up without incident; I'm typing this post on the machine.

So the obvious question is: what don't I understand and what did I do wrong?

Thanks for any insight.

Art, very happy to have his machine back
 

Meghan54

Lifer
Oct 18, 2009
11,684
5,228
136
Well, obviously either the memory won't really do those settings.....now, the question is why?

Either the motherboard won't support those settings or the memory is defective.

Which G. Skill set did you buy, btw?
 

ArtShapiro

Member
May 6, 2011
123
0
71
Which G. Skill set did you buy, btw?

It is F3-10666CL7D-8GXH I asked GSkill which of the two CAS 7s they recommended for this setup; the other one I think ends in RH rather than XH. They replied almost immediately and without explanation said the XH was more appropriate.

Art