Is it my memory or my Motherboard? RAM timings totally wrong after crash.

I just installed some OCZ Platinum 1066MHz memory in my comp today... I fired it up and was doing just fine for a few hours at stock settings, then I decided to start playing with the memory to see how fast I could get it running. OCZ claims they test the sticks up to 1200 MHz, so I started bumping it up and got to 1190MHz, it didn't like that at the stock voltage (2.2v), so I bumped it up to 2.25v. It booted into windows, then a minute later, windows crashed while I went to get a glass of water. When I got back it was trying to load windows repair. I restarted the computer and went into bios and it was trying to run my RAS at 6T instead of 18T, that I had it set to... a few were set to about half of what they should be, and one of the timings was at 0T In fact CAS is about the only one that will run where I tell it. Now, nomatter what I do, I cannot tell it to run at 1066 with any realistic timings... it will allow me full control of the timings at any other speed, 800, 667, 533, 400... as I type this It's running at 800 MHz at 4-4-4-12-18.

This motherboard is a piece of crap and I wouldn't be surprised if I damaged it, it won't run any memory (tried 4 different types) within 100 MHz of it's stock speed if I set the FSB over 240 MHz, regardless of chipset voltage, but if I set memory to it's minimum speed (400) I can crank the FSB all the way to 285 MHz. And of course then there's the issue of not being able to adjust the NB multiplier at all even though it's an option in bois... I'm about to throw the thing out the window.

Edit: Ran the blend test on prime 95 for 35 mins at timings of 4-4-4-12-18, 1T @ 800 MHz & 1.9v I just can't see the memory being damaged.

Edit2: Seems to run fine at 5-5-5-15-26, 2T @ 960 MHz & 1.9v... that's funny, I don't remember installing 35Gb of RAM...

So... am I just flat out right that I damaged my motherboard or what? I reflashed bios to no avail. I assume that if I was wrong on the internet, somebody would have let me know by now. I don't have any way to test this ram in another board, as nobody I know has a 1066 compliant motherboard and I've been eyeing a Biostar TA790GX... so I guess I just need to upgrade and hope it fixes the problem.

OCZ has been selling a lot of second rate ram. That ram will no sooner run at 1066 than I'll run a four minute mile. Go to their forum and you will find it filled with complaints. They blame the mobo's, AMD, your testing program, but not anything about their products. OCZ has been riding on it's reputation for a while now and people around here need to start realizing they are not what they pretend to be. There are some issues with AMD and the 2x2gig 1066MHz ram, but there are many more issues that are just their bad products. Of the last 4 sets of OCZ ram I have purchased only one runs at it's stock speed without errors.

R7

I appreciate the response, and I would be the first to point a finger at the RAM... if it wasn't for one issue, and I know OCZ is not infallable... the motherboard itself has issues particularly with running RAM past 240 MHz on the FSB... This problem also exists across my 2x1Gb of Ballistix PC6400, and 2x2Gb of Corsair XMS2 PC6400 (both sets ran @ 900 MHz on my last board on 2.1v). If I select DDR2 533 for my PC6400, and try to run an FSB over 240 MHz it will not boot. If I select DDR2 400 for my PC6400, it will let me go up to 285 MHz on the FSB. If I select DDR2 800 for my PC8500, it won't boot if I run the FSB over 240 MHz, but if I select DDR2 667, it will run up to 285 MHz (this is at 1.3v and I don't want to risk burning the chipset with stock cooling past that voltage). This issue also makes it tough to test the problem out since 240 MHz @ DDR2 800 puts me at 960 MHz, and I simply can't select DDR2 1066 because the timings it chooses are totally crazy and unusable. The problem I described, also happens to all of the sticks individually and at CPU speeds well below stock (down to 1.8GHz).

I dunno, am I still off base? I just don't want it to seem like I'm arbitrarily shooting down your suggestion, but as far as I can tell, as long as I don't select 1066 in BIOS it runs like a bat out of hell... to the point where the motherboard won't go any further in FSB. BTW I tested the 12v rail with a volt meter and I'm getting 12.12v, not 9.77v like in that screenshot... Speedfan has no idea how to monitor the voltages.

Sorry, about the OCZ rant, but they really fry my onions. I just RMA'd some 1066 OCZ ram that wouldn't run faster than 860MHz. You may want to get some nice slow, but stable settings and then try to re-flash the bios as it seems to be a problem at that level. You may also have a corrupted Windows installation, but that would not cause the issues in the bios.

R7

rseven said:

Sorry, about the OCZ rant, but they really fry my onions. I just RMA'd some 1066 OCZ ram that wouldn't run faster than 860MHz. You may want to get some nice slow, but stable settings and then try to re-flash the bios as it seems to be a problem at that level. You may also have a corrupted Windows installation, but that would not cause the issues in the bios.

R7

Click to expand...

True, it may make a difference to flash the bios with low settings. It passed memtest for an hour and hasn't given me any issue at these settings so far. OCZ was the cheapest option for performance RAM when I bought these sticks... so feel free to bad mouth them all you want... I have no affinity toward them. I did fry my calendar program when it crashed, but windows seems to be otherwise fine.