OCZ PC3200 *BANG* - Why didnt I listen to myself!

I'm baffled, can someone please help me out here?

Well I finally decided to try my first PC upgrade and ordered everything to do it and all parts were new except I decided to go with some refurb OCZ Platinum Edition PC3200 2.0 2-3-5 1T. It all came in this week (mon. & tue.) and I finally got it all going fine...................for 2 days

Ran memtest86 1st thing because I am limited on days to RMA refurb ram back to newegg and the tests came out error free so I thought thats a relief. Decided to oc a bit with help from a couple people here and I was pretty happy with the results thus far. Prime tests were good on the limited time that I left it running.

So today I decide to try and do better on my oc and increase fsb to see if my ram is limiting me. Whats in my sig is as high as I could get so I put settings all back to what I knew was working fine (in my sig) and I've had nothing but problems. I get no boot, blue screen, some screen wanting to check my hdd, solid black screen, various beeps of all different types so the only way I could get back here to post was to either put my old stuff back together or leave the bios as 600x1. So I decided I will run memtest again just for kicks and now it fails everytime on test #5 @ 98% done and loads the screen with massive numbers

So I thought to myself, did I screw up the memory, or was it not actually refurbed and tested by OCZ but rather someone else had problems and returned it and they just wanted to move it. I dont know, but I'm pretty let down over it all now and have to figure out what ram to get now Ughhhhh!

So if you have ever heard a sad story like this or actually experienced something similar, please tell me its just the ram acting up and not my mobo/psu/cpu or anything else at play here.

that ocz stuff is pretty tolerant. i have yet to burn/blow up any memory, most modules are pretty tough. my first thought was either the memory is marginal or something else went wrong

well I didnt see any smoke

so thats a good thing, it's like I pushed it just a small bit farther than what I have in my sig and now it doesnt want to do that anymore. And then the memtest throws errors now when it didnt before.

Can you think what else it might be if anything? Or some other tests I may can do that will tell where a problem lies?

thanks for anyone's help


edit: anyone want to suggest me some ram now since I'm shopping again?

wierd things going on, couldnt boot at anything other than 600x1 (what bios normally shows) but now I can boot to 200x12 ????

I tried 220x11.5 like I was using for past 2 days and it will not boot. Can bios be messed up, is it memory, could it be something else?

what is going on with this mess?

Is it possible that errors were written to your hard drive and it has been corrupted? Have you tried reformatting the drive and re-installing the OS? It is a bit of a pain to have to go through all that, but it would at least eliminate it from the equation.

errrr is it me or did u do a stock test and then did a memtest overclock =\
did u try setting the ram back to all stock and test it again?......did u try giving the ram sum volts...also try spd timmings maybe u kinda messed up on it...or u didnt set the divider properly.

I tested with memtest as soon as I got pc put together since I was limited on time to rma the ram if it had problems, which I was worried about since it was refurb anyway. today after the problems started, I ran memtest and failed on 98% complete of test 5.
So yes, I tested the memory (stock) and I tested today (oc'ed a bit).

I cleared cmos everytime I ran into a problem today just so it would be fresh. I tried varied voltages, on cpu and ram and I relaxed timings and tried them as they are in my sig.

I just tried whats in my sig again a few minutes ago and upon boot it goes to black screen and a loud constant beep from the mobo.

I did not reformat today, went through that headache 2 days ago when I installed all this stuff and had to do that then
Could something be written to the drive causing this?

hmmm try this 200*11.5 1.775v
ram timmings by spd
then see what happens...becus on my nf7-s if i relax the timmings it never works with my stick off pc-2700 but if i set it to spd and 1:1 divider it runs fine lol

1-Man-Army said:

hmmm try this 200*11.5 1.775v
ram timmings by spd
then see what happens...becus on my nf7-s if i relax the timmings it never works with my stick off pc-2700 but if i set it to spd and 1:1 divider it runs fine lol

Click to expand...

ok, I tried that and it booted fine
200*11.5 @ 1.775
spd on the ram

but thats pretty far from what I had stable for 2 days

I just tried these also....

210*11.5 @ 1.775 (by spd) = no boot
200*12 @ 1.775 (by spd) = boots fine

how did I just go and lose my fsb of 220 that I had for 2 days stable I just dont get it?

try more volt? for the ram that is and btw above 220 fsb try upping the nb volt too.....idk man thats pretty weird tho

1-Man-Army said:

try more volt? for the ram that is and btw above 220 fsb try upping the nb volt too

Click to expand...

ok, I can do that but it still doesnt explain how I lost what I was successful with for 2 days

220*11.5 @ 1.775 (user define) 2.0 2-3-5

btw, when tinkering with this today I did up cpu volts at everything up to 1.9v and no luck

and the ram up to 2.9v as well

I'll go try it again though.....

ok now I am at:

200*12.5 @ 1.85v (by spd)
ram @ 2.7v

and it boots fine, seems that if I try anything above 200 now no matter what anything else is set at, it fails.

Anyone have a clue why this is?

200*13 @ 1.85 (by spd)
ram 2.7v

boots fine also

200*13.5 @ 1.85, 1.875, 1.9 will not boot

im not sure man but thats pretty messed up maybe u should start running the cpu at stock test to see what ur max fsb is then combine both cpu and fsb together and do the final voltage adjustment

1-Man-Army said:

im not sure man but thats pretty messed up maybe u should start running the cpu at stock test to see what ur max fsb is then combine both cpu and fsb together and do the final voltage adjustment

Click to expand...

ok, just tested these....

202*8 @ 1.775. 1.8, 1.85 = so even 2 above 200 and it fails

back to 200*13 @ 1.775 (by spd) now


could something be wrong with the board, or more likely the memory?

Try reflashing the BIOS.

disk11 said:

Try reflashing the BIOS.

Click to expand...

I hate to ask this but yes I'm a newbie

1. how do I do that?
2. and keep the original bios?
3. will it cause me to have to install winxp pro again - I pray no

TRy using one stick, sometimes these boards dont like 512 sticks. Also try diff slots.

Some of these boards dont like high Northbridge voltages.

Diff bios for these boards help alot of times but I would try other stuff first.

FATAL ENIGMA send me an email and we will RMA your memory. Then we can be sure it's not a memory problem.

Steve