Memory problems, blue screens galore.

Nocturnal

Lifer
Jan 8, 2002
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I have an A8N32-SLI Deluxe with recent BIOS and an 3800 X2 Manchester with 2GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer.

Anyhow I've been having blue screens lately and I finally got around to testing the system using Orthos Beta by Johnny and soon realized that at stock settings, including CPU and memory that I had errors. I realized then that perhaps there is something wrong with my memory.

I ran Memtest on my computer for 24 hours and there were no errors reported.

I went ahead and overclocked my system by changing the FSB to 210 and leaving the multi at 10. As soon as I started the Orthos program not even a few seconds in I got an error.

I tried with one stick in instead of both. Each stick could go through with the system overclocked to 210x10 with no errors for around 5 minutes.

I immediately put the sticks back in and tried Orthos again and again it failed within a few seconds.

I went back into BIOS and upped the DDR voltage to 2.75 for my Ballistix sticks and now I am error free in Orthos.

Should I have to up the voltage to 2.75 (I know Ballistix is rated to run at 2.8)? Shouldn't auto be fine or no? Are some memory sticks/brands picky about this particular setting?

UPDATE: Even at 2.75 it error within Orthos again. I put it back to stock everything except for the 2.75 DDR voltage. I'm about to try again. I'll report back.

UPDATE: Okay even at stock speeds with both DIMMs installed it errors. Does anyone think I can safely conclude that my memory is at fault? The thing is, if I put in one or the other and run the tests they don't error. Is that indicative of the motherboard possibly being bad? I won't know until tonight when I can take my box home to test out other things. This sucks.
 

Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
17,768
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It could be voltage droop (as tech heads call it).

As long as the actual memory module stays within limits and the heatspreaders aren't boiling hot it should be fine.

A lot of enthusiast parts require more voltage to achieve top speed. DDR-2 spec is 1.8V yet some modules won't post until they get 2.0v. That's a PIA if you don't have standard module to get into the BIOS and set the voltage to 2.0 or higher.
 

Nocturnal

Lifer
Jan 8, 2002
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Just an update, I changed the the setting T1 to T2 and for some reason or another it's been stable on Orthos for 10 minutes. Hmmm.