My AOpen AX4C MAX Canterwood Setup is giving me headaches

[Pannel]

My AOpen AX4C MAX Canterwood Setup is giving me headaches.

My setup is as follows:

Intel P4 2.4B
AOpen AX4C MAX
Corsair 1024MB TWINX3200LL (As two modules of course!)
ASUS Geforce4 Ti-4400
Creative SB Audigy 2
Western Digital JB8000
Antec TruePower 430W

My HDD is connected to the primary IDE connected and both my optical drives are connected to the second IDE header.

I'm running Corsair TWINX3200LL modules and I THINK this is what is causing the troubles. I'm NOT running them by SPD.

At the moment with my DAMN expensive memory I am running 2.5-4-4-8. If I drop the timings any lower I crash. I have the DIMM voltage reasonably high as well, so voltage isn't the issue here.

I am also running the latest AOpen BIOS - 103.

The strange thing is this:

I have memtest86 as a bootable CD. Upon running memtest86 I can have the memory timings set all the way down to 2-2-2-6 and not run into any problems (I am only running the first 7 tests). So of course I can run 2-3-3-6 as well. If I try either of these timings and attempt to boot into Windows XP, I crash every time.

If I try to overclock my CPU with this board Windows XP hates that as well and crashes (if I can even get into it). Even just from 133 to 150 will cause instability. Could this be tied to the ram?

Any thoughts on what I can do to find the real problem here?

Is it hardware or Software that is causing the problems?

Any help would be Brilliant.

Thanks,

Mark

 

[WizardNJ]

Mark,

Try with just one stick of ram in the slot closest to the cpu. The try with just the other stick of ram. See if one might be bad.
Also make sure when running two sticks in dual ddr configuration that you have them in both blue slots.

I had trouble running the Corsair twin 512 PC3200LL at any timing at DDR400, but you are not running at 400 since you have a 533 cpu. I've had to bump the vcore voltage to 2.75 volts to get it to boot and it was still unstable. On the other hand my OCZ PC3200EL runs DDR400 2,6,3,2 @ 2.5 volts.

 

[Pannel]

WizardNJ,

I'll have a blast at what you suggested now. I'll post back with my results! Hehe.

Thanks for your input.

Cheers,

Mark.

 

[Pannel]

Okies,

I have tested both the sticks in another machine and they seem to be fine individually. They would run at 2-2-2-6-1T individually, although I wasn't running them at 200Mhz, more like ~150Mhz

They wouldn't run at 2-2-2-6-1T TOGETHER on the other machine, but that might be a chipset problem and not a RAM one.

So I THINK I can conclude that the sticks are okay.

They will run on this AOpen AX4C MAX board individually at 2-3-3-6, only when the voltage is high and they are set at DDR266 - Which is rather pathetic really!

To get them stable at DDR333 memory timings of 2.5-4-4-8 need to be used.

Overclocking is impossible as well. Even if I bump up the FSB a tiny bit windows XP will not load and I get a blue screen.

So what is the problem? I guess there are three options.

1. My motherboard?
2. The memory WHEN USED WITH this motherboard?
3. The RAM?

I'm inclined to believe it is the second option. So the million dollar question is this:

IF I GET NEW MEMORY (MOST LIKLEY OCZ) WILL THIS SOLVE MY PROBLEMS?

Thanks for you time.

Cheers,

 

[WizardNJ]

My OCZ PC3200EL works fine at stock voltages and DDR400 @ 2,6,3,2 timing but I am running a P4 3.0C (800 fsb).

I don;t have any other suggestions at this point.

One last thing would be to run the ram @ 1.6x instead of auto and then try running up the fsb from 133 to see if the ram was holding you back from overclocking.

The Corsair should be loafing at 266 MHz but stranger things have happened.

Dave

 

[classy]

There are a couple threads about this. Corsair memory has problems at the moment with Canterwood.

 

[shoman94]

Only the Corsair LL ram. C2 ram is fine. Bios 1.03 was supposed t fix it but I'm not sure if it did. You can go to the forums at www.corsairmemory.com ....on the bottom left of the page you'll see a link to the forums there...check it out.....