Ram undervolt question

[zhoutian]

Hi guys, had a quick question about undervolting your RAM.

I bought a pair of Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT12864AA804 DDR2800 4-4-4-12 sticks. These sticks are rated at 2.2V according to the specs. I read that it's good to undervolt your RAM since it allows them to run cooler and prolongs the life of the sticks, so I decided to try it myself; however, I'm brand new at this.

I went through BIOS and set the voltage from 2.2V down to 2.0V. I then ran memtest86+ 1.70 for a couple passes at 2.0V and it showed 0 errors. Does this mean that I can safely run my RAM at 2.0V instead of 2.2V, or do I need to do some other tests before settling at this voltage for good? Is running the standard tests in Memtest86+ good enough or do I need to use custom tests, and do I need to turn on ECC testing mode? And lastly, should I keep lowering the voltage until memtest starts showing errors, and then set it at the lowest voltage that yielded no errors in Memtest?

Thanks for your time and help.

 

[Cutthroat]

I wouldn't use memtest for stability testing, try using Orthos Prime, and general usage to test the stability. There's nothing wrong with undervolting your RAM as long as it's stable, at the first sign of strangeness, or errors bump the voltage up.

 

[JustaGeek]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2083508&enterthread=y

 

[zhoutian]

Thanks to both of you! =)

 

[Master Shake]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2083508&enterthread=y

I was just about to post that

 

[cmdrdredd]

Yes you can use memtest for basic staility of memory at functioning properly at a specific voltage, timings, and speed. That will tell you if your memory is good at that area (also will tell you that your memory controller can handle the load). Then you should test in the windows environment to be sure.