Sorting out RAM speeds for a Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard

[danb1985]

Hi,

Really stupid question, I'm sure, but I had a search of the forums and couldn't find a response that specifically helped my situation.

I've just fitted a second pair of GB RAM sticks to my Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard, bringing it to a total of 4GB - the RAM is labelled by Ebuyer as "Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5(5-5-5-12)" - I have to confess, I'm a bit out of the loop on hardware and have no idea what the 5-5-5-12 actually means.

Initially after installing the RAM, the PC refused to boot at all - I found myself a forum that suggested slowing the RAM speed down from 800 to 667 and unlinking it from the FSB, which seemed to work, as I could now boot and run fairly intensive games. I'm still not entirely clear I did the BIOS stuff right, mind you - it's not something I'm particularly familiar with. I've got the 'link' between FSB and RAM at 'Sync Mode' - not sure if that's what I need.

Today, however, I've bluescreened twice, both times during games, and I can only put this down to a RAM issue. I'm posting here to check exactly what I'd need to do to clock this RAM correctly - there are lots of variables to play with in the BIOS and I don't entirely know what needs changing! Do I need to play with voltage at all?

If it helps, the system I'm running is this:
600W PSU
Asus P5N-E SLI 650i motherboard
Intel E6750 2.66Ghz (not overclocked)
An existing pair of RAM sticks as detailed above - all the RAM has been checked, and seems to work fine
Gecube HD3850 512MB DDR3 graphics card
Vista Business 32-bit

Any help would be hugely appreciated - I'm well aware I'm not as technical as I need to be! Thanks a bunch.

 

[TC91]

You most likely need to increase the voltages on the northbridge / memory. For memory, a voltage of 2.1v or less is very safe. You likely also need a +0.1v boost on the spp voltage (northbridge).

 

[akhilles]

^^^ What he said. 4 sticks need more juice to be stable. At stock volt, they will post, allowing you to enter bios to make changes.

As for sync/unsync, it's subjective. Some prefer sync, other prefers unsync. I prefer unsync cuz it lets me overclock only the cpu. In sync mode, both the cpu & ram will be clocked at the FSB.

 

[danb1985]

Thanks for that - from what I can tell from the site I bought the RAM from, the stock voltage for the sticks is 1.9V. I've upped it to 2.08V in the BIOS - is that going to be enough, or is it just a question of trial and error? I'm reluctant to try and and up the voltage too much in case it damages them!