MSI P6N SLI Platinum, problems with 4 sticks of RAM

[GiddyGeek]

I Have:
Motherboard: MSI P6N SLI Platinum motherboard.
Memory: G.SKILL 8GB(4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Quad Channel Kit Desktop Memory.
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor.
Video: EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express X16
PSU: OCZ StealthXStream OCZ600SXS ATX12V / EPS12V 600W.

My problem is that I have to clock down the speed of the RAM to 700Mhz for the pc to even boot. At the the listed speed of 800Mhz, I will start the PC up and it will POST and everything looks fine. After POST however, the screen goes black, except for a cursor in the upper right hand side of the screen, and then nothing else happens. When I change it to 700Mhz or lower the PC boots fine. Also if I remove 4GB, it will boot with no problems.

I emailed G Skill support and received this reply:
It is because most of 680i or 650i chipset has problem to run 4 sticks of memory. when you have 4 sticks of memory on those nvidia chipset, it will not operate at DDR2 800. You need to either run two sticks or lower to DDR2 667. This is been confirmed by many motherboard designer

I emailed MSI support and haven't received any reply yet.

The research that I've done so far has indicated that I should increase the voltage but for some reason the BIOS won't allow me to do that. My BIOS isn't the latest, there is one more I could flash to but I would like to avoid that if possible.

Any ideas, comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Puffnstuff]

What bios version are you using? 1.5 is the latest and is the only one that supports the go stepping of the q6600. As for memory problems they were addressed in v1.1. I run 4 sticks and never had any problems with them. I only experienced strangeness after replacing my e6400 with the q6600 and that stopped the day after it started.

 

[GiddyGeek]

My BIOS Version is 1.4. My Processor is G0 stepping, but my BIOS has no problem identifying the CPU.

 

[Ben J]

I have almost the exact same setup (P6N platinum, Q6600, and GSkill), and expectedly, I'm having the same problem with using all four memory slots.

Please post the response from MSI if/when you get it.

 

[GiddyGeek]

I haven't heard back from MSI and I don't really expect to in the near future. But I'll post it when I get it.

I flashed my BIOS to the latest version, 1.5. I haven't had much time to mess with it but I did put all 4 sticks in after updating the bios and reinstalling Vista 64-bit. It booted fine and everything seems to be running OK now but I want to put it through some tests to see.

I'll keep you posted.

 

[JustaGeek]

Set the memory voltage, frequency and timings manually (2T command rate).

Increase the Northbridge voltage, as far as 1.56V if needed (but add a fan to the NB).

Good luck!

 

[Puffnstuff]

I also run increased voltages on my chipset, both nb & sb and a slight bump on the cpu vcore plus I've got the bus set to 8% voltage increase.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: GiddyGeek
I haven't heard back from MSI and I don't really expect to in the near future. But I'll post it when I get it.

I flashed my BIOS to the latest version, 1.5. I haven't had much time to mess with it but I did put all 4 sticks in after updating the bios and reinstalling Vista 64-bit. It booted fine and everything seems to be running OK now but I want to put it through some tests to see.

I'll keep you posted.

Looks like you're on your way to fixing the problem but there's a few things to be aware of with the P6N and 4GB+/4dimms. Its 100% possible to run 4 dimms/8GB with a Quad on this board, as that's what I'm running now completely stable. You'll definitely want to update to the latest BIOS. 4GB+ was a problem before BIOS 1.2. It might be a problem with a Quad from 1.2 to 1.4 so as others said, updating to 1.5 is a good idea. I installed my Q6600 with 1.5 and 8GB already installed, so I don't know if there were any problems with 1.4 + Quad + 4GB+/4dimms. If you're overclocking, biggest difference I found compared to a C2D E6400 is having to adjust VTT (if you Google it, this feature specifically addresses Quad core OC'ing stability). Also, newer G0 stepping Quads tend to have very low VIDs, so you may need to crank up the voltage much higher than you needed to increase the voltage on an older C2D with a higher VID.

There's also problems with Vista 64 and more than 2GB/4GB that you'll need to install hot fixes for. There's a problem with installing Vista with more than 2GB, the work around is to install Vista with only 2GB, then install the rest of the RAM. I didn't run into that problem but its a known bug. There's also a few other hot fixes that address 4GB+ and USB devices/SATA drivers etc. Best bet is to install Vista 64 with 2GB, get all your Windows Updates, then insert the rest of your RAM. Smaller chance this prevents you from booting into Windows, but it could be causing the system to hang.

If you're overclocking, biggest difference I found compared to a C2D E6400 is having to adjust VTT (if you Google it, this feature specifically addresses Quad core OC'ing stability). Also, newer G0 stepping Quads tend to have very low VIDs, so you may need to crank up the voltage much higher than you needed to increase the voltage on an older C2D with a higher VID.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Chizow what voltages are you running to get your system to run that speed?

 

[Ben J]

Ok, I updated to 1.5 and the four stick problem has been resolved. Although I see you already found that out from what I read on another forum.

As far as OC'ing goes, I'm not really into that yet. As a matter of fact, I was actually pretty apprehensive about flashing the BIOS, as I'd never done it before. 'Twas a breeze though, and it seemed like it would take a really stupid mistake to do it wrong.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Just one piece of advice while flashing, make sure that you are attached to a battery backup when you do it because if the power fails your mb will be dead unless it has a secondary bios feature.

 

[ru1thirst]

I'm also having a problem with 4 sticks here. My bios is still v.1 that came with the board. I've tried finding info on how to update it but can't find anything that makes sense. I've tried the msi live update and that doesn't work. Think it may be a Vista 64bit problem? Anyway, didn't want to use it anyway. Want to do it manually. So my question to you Ben J is that sense you say it was a breeze to flash it to 1.5 can you or anybody else give a quick explanation or link as to how to do it? I have the 1.5 version from the MSI website unzipped to a folder on my desktop. I'm sure I just need the "afud408 and a7350nms.150 file?" What do I do with those. I tried burning them to a disc and then setting boot to cd drive first but nothing. Haven't done this before so any info would be great! 4gb of ram slows my machine to a crawl and takes forever to boot up.

Got it. The usb flash tool for msi boards works great. Just an FYI for anybody thats as new to flashing a bios as I.