Is my ram the problem?

[x79]

Hey everyone,

I've been reading through the forums a little and decided to sign up so I could get some help from you guys. Anyway, I built my x79 system about 2 years ago which consists of:

3930K
Sabertooth X79
Antec Kuhler
Corsair XMS 32GB 1600Mhz (CMX32GX3M4A1600C11)
GTX580 3GB
850W PSU

I've recently done maintenance and cleaned out the dust and applied some new TIM and got my idle temp around 29c and since I've had the system for a while I decided to try some OCing but I've been having problems.

I can run XMP and the computer works fine at 3.8Ghz speed, and I can even run Asus AI tuner and get 4.0Ghz but the ram frequency ends up being something really strange and I know I can get faster.

I've been reading around and trying different things: I tried using XMP and then raising my multiplier to 44 (with auto voltage, manual voltage and offset) but the computer shuts off and starts cycling on and off constantly until I press MEMOK button to get back into bios. I've tried to manually enter ram settings and increase multiplier and voltage but same thing. I've tried it with turbo and speedstep off, also with C states off, but no dice.

I'm thinking its my ram or possibly my 850w PSU, but I'm not sure. I bought this ram because it was what they had on the shelf back when I bought my parts. It works fine with stock and XMP but not with anything beyond that.

Please give me your opinion and advice on replacement ram if needed. I know I would want to get atleast 1866Mhz ram, but would getting even higher clocked ram benefit? I'm not sure and need your help. Ideally I want to get my CPU steady at 4.4 to 4.6 GHz.

THANKS !!

 

[EarthDog]

Idle temps are not the important ones... its load temps.

Your PSU has plenty of power assuming it is a quality brand (IMPORTANT!) What brand/model is it?

Much faster than 1600 there are no performance increases except in rare cases. Honestly, I would leave it as is. If you would still like to tinker, are you sure it is the memory that is the problem? Because when you raise the multi, you are not touching the ram speed. However, when you raise BCLK that will raise the memory frequency...

What do you mean by 'odd speed' when you use the auto overclocking? That feature overclocks by both BCLK and multi so it would make sense you would see an odd value. How about posting up some CPUz screen shots please? The main, memory, and SPD tabs please...

 

[x79]

Idle temps are not the important ones... its load temps.

Your PSU has plenty of power assuming it is a quality brand (IMPORTANT!) What brand/model is it?

Much faster than 1600 there are no performance increases except in rare cases. Honestly, I would leave it as is. If you would still like to tinker, are you sure it is the memory that is the problem? Because when you raise the multi, you are not touching the ram speed. However, when you raise BCLK that will raise the memory frequency...

What do you mean by 'odd speed' when you use the auto overclocking? That feature overclocks by both BCLK and multi so it would make sense you would see an odd value. How about posting up some CPUz screen shots please? The main, memory, and SPD tabs please...

Thank you for responding! Here are the Cpu-Z screen shots.
It is currently just running in XMP with everything else untouched.

When I said the AI tuner makes the ram speed a strange number-the ram ends up being like 1445Mhz or something like that to run the CPU at 4.0 GHz. I'd like to get the CPU overclocked but keep the ram at 1600MHz if possible. I raised the multiplier to 45 for each core and manually set the cpu voltage at 1.35v and it loaded winows into a BSOD, so I went back and increased the voltage to 1.40v and it booted into windows, but when I went to real temp and cpu-z the clock was at 3.2Ghz. My bios adjustments didn't stick... I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Also my PSU is a cooler master 80+ certified model: RS-850-EMBA

Thank you so much

 

[EarthDog]

PSU is fine.

Notice the middle CPUz (memory tab). See how it has 11-11-11-30 for the timings? The XMP profile is 11-12-12-32. Set it to those timings manually to start with.

When you say they didn't 'stick', did you try this under a load? Meaning are you sure you were not seeing the power saving features at work? When you put a load on it, did it ramp up to the clockspeed you set?

 

[x79]

Ok good, im glad PSU is fine because I really don't wanna spend more money!

I am going to try setting those ram settings manually right now. How do I then go about raising the multiplier and getting the CPU overclocked? Does the ram voltage also need to be raised?

When I said the OC didn't stick, it really didn't. I was running cpu-z and the multiplier stayed at 3.2 during 100% load, but the voltage did stay at 1.40v which I did change in the bios. Even with the higher CPU voltage it only got around 60c under full load. Will the temp go up even higher with the OC or does the voltage increase determine the higher temps?

Thanks for all the help!

 

[x79]

Ok, I tried manually setting those timings you gave me and the computer got stuck in a loop. It just turns on, black screen, and then turns off and keeps doing this until I press the MEMOK button on the motherboard.

When I set the ram to XMP in the bios, the timings are still 11-11-11-30...
It doesn't seem to run at 11-12-12-32

 

[x79]

Turns out it was my memory... I put the speed to 1333MHz instead of its claimed 1600MHz speed and now my overclock holds. I'm running 4.4GHz! Going to stress test it and see how it does. So is my ram just junk for overclocking?

 

[x79]

OK great news - I followed an over clocking guide for my setup and saw that the guy was using an older version of the bios so I reverted to the old version and overclocking is much more stable now. I am running 4.4GHz @ 1.37v. The ram seems to only like being ran at 1333MHz at 11-11-11-30 otherwise computer freezes immediately after start up.

The only problem now is cooling...my temps are pretty bad right now, I'm idling 45-50c and under load it jumps right up to 73c upwards to 80c after a few minutes. Im thinking maybe I didn't apply enough Arctic Silver 5 or I need to upgrade the cooling system. Would you recommend a XSPC 360 rad system? I have a corsair 800D and it would fit right in the top.

Also, I'm thinking of getting some new ram because these XMS3 are giving better results at 1333 than at 1600..
What do you think of this ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231626

 

[EarthDog]

Slow down champ.

1. If you cannot run your ram at its rated speeds, there is a problem.
2. You cooling and temps, you mention 73C-80C... but doing what? Stress testing or? Where did you get that value from?
3. Depending on timings, ram shouldn't give a better result at the lower speed. How are you judging this 'result' in the first place? The performance difference between ram is usually not much if any at all in most applications.. I don't think shelling out $300+ would be worth it regardless. Let's get them working at 1600 first.

So, in short, let's not go off buying stuff when we don't know if we have a problem with anything in the first place... though, you have essentially hit your temperature limit. In that light, why are we pushing past 4.4Ghz anyway?

 

[x79]

Slow down champ.

1. If you cannot run your ram at its rated speeds, there is a problem.
2. You cooling and temps, you mention 73C-80C... but doing what? Stress testing or? Where did you get that value from?
3. Depending on timings, ram shouldn't give a better result at the lower speed. How are you judging this 'result' in the first place? The performance difference between ram is usually not much if any at all in most applications.. I don't think shelling out $300+ would be worth it regardless. Let's get them working at 1600 first.

So, in short, let's not go off buying stuff when we don't know if we have a problem with anything in the first place... though, you have essentially hit your temperature limit. In that light, why are we pushing past 4.4Ghz anyway?

LOL! I know, I know, I just want this baby to scream. I run it as a hackintosh mostly since I do a lot of picture and video editing, and I go by geekbench scores. The new macpro coming out is benching around 23,000 points in geekbench so I'm trying to get as close as that as possible. I'm testing the reliability of the OC in windows though as it has more utilities to do so.

1. I can run it at XMP 11-11-11-30 at 1600MHz in windows, but during P95 Blend test the computer will BSOD after about 15 minutes. If I set the ram to XMP but lower the frequency to 1333MHz I don't get the BSOD, but temps will eventuall get too high after about 20 minutes and I get the 80c temp warning popping up, so I stop the test and let the CPU cool down.

2. Yeah, the temps get crazy high during P95 Blend test while the cpu is at 100% load. Otherwise it idles around 40c. It's really strange though because in another thread there is a guy who claims he's running 4.8GHz on my cpu with a H100 and his load temps don't go over 44c. That makes me think maybe I put too little AS5 when I reseated my cooler. I used a small pea in the center, maybe I should re-do it with the spread technique?

3. The way I came to the conclusion that the 1333 frequency is giving me better performance than 1600 frequency, besides the quick crashing during P95, is also that when I boot into my hackintosh partition and run geekbench I am getting ~20,200 points at 4.2GHz with ram at 1333MHz, but when I set the ram at 1600MHz I can't get more than 19,500 points.

One other thing is that with the Ram set at 1600MHz, it was able to pass a ram test with no problems, so I don't know if the BSOD is because of thermal issues while running at 100% load at 1600MHz or because of the frequency itself. I don't know if that would make a difference or not, but still I get the higher benchmark score with the ram running at 1333 so I'm really confused. I wish I would've got different ram originally as I don't think XMS 3 ram is really made for tinkering.

One thing I know for sure is I need to do something about my cooling system. I currently have a 120 radiator closed loop system with 1 NPF12 in pull config and the temps are BAD! You think I should try to reapply TIM before looking into new cooling options? 4.2GHz is max I can go right now with the current temps

The first 3 pics are just at idle at 4.2GHz with RAM at 1600MHz. The last pic shows how high the temps got before I stopped the test while the CPU was at 4.2GHz and the ram was set at 1333MHz.

 

[x79]

Here's some evidence to my claim that my ram is giving better performance at 1333 than 1600. On the OSX drive there doesn't seem to be any freezing issues wether 1333 or 1600MHz so I was able to perform some tests with each.

Here are the Cinebench scores for 1333MHz and 1600Mhz

11.94 at 4.2GHz with RAM at 1333
11.05 at 4.2GHz with RAM at 1600

Sorry I post so much, I just want as much info as possible here for you to review when you get a chance to check it out.
Appreciate all of your advice and help!

Also, temps aren't so bad in OSX, they stay within the 60c range, but then again I'm not under 100% load like in P95. The over clock will only be ran in OSX because I need the extra power, in WIN7 I will probably use default settings since all I do in WIN7 is play counter strike.

 

[x79]

LOL, sorry for another post, but pretty excited.

I'm running stable in OSX at 4.4GHz at 1.38V with RAM set to 1333MHz

Temps in HW Monitor around 50c during Cinebench, I think I can live with that. The temps seem to get a lot higher in Windows 7 during P95, but I don't think I will be pushing them that hard in a real life scenario. Again, the over clock is going to be used in OSX for extra horsepower.

Here's my geekbench and cinebench scores at 4.4GHz with RAM at 1333MHz

So, really my question for you is why do you think the ram at 1600MHz makes things a bit slower? That's really the one thing I can't understand.

 

[Mandrake4565]

I can run it at XMP 11-11-11-30 at 1600MHz in windows, but during P95 Blend test the computer will BSOD after about 15 minutes.

Possibly because your timings are tighter then suggested. As ED suggested you need to manually set the timings to the XMP 1600 profile which would be 11 12 12 32 41.

 

[x79]

Possibly because your timings are tighter then suggested. As ED suggested you need to manually set the timings to the XMP 1600 profile which would be 11 12 12 32 41.

Hey, thanks for replying!

I had tried to set it manually to those timings, but it seemed to get worse, however I did not set the 41. Where does the 41 belong in the bios? Could running it at the posted timings from corsair (11-11-11-30) while at 1600MHz also make it perform slower than at 1333MHz? I've been dealing with that.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Could running it at the posted timings from corsair (11-11-11-30) while at 1600MHz also make it perform slower than at 1333MHz? I've been dealing with that.

It depends on the bench and the timings when running 1333. You said it seemed to get worse when the timings were set at 11-12-12-32. Worse in what way? When overclocking the best way to do so is to eliminate all possible causes of crashes. Running memory timings tighter then spec could be one of the causes, so if you want to push higher setting the memory to suggested timings helps eliminate possible causes of BSOD's.

 

[x79]

It depends on the bench and the timings when running 1333. You said it seemed to get worse when the timings were set at 11-12-12-32. Worse in what way? When overclocking the best way to do so is to eliminate all possible causes of crashes. Running memory timings tighter then spec could be one of the causes, so if you want to push higher setting the memory to suggested timings helps eliminate possible causes of BSOD's.

Well it was worse at the time because at those timings it was crashing as soon as the desktop showed up. It is strange because the XMP profile in the bios and corsairs timings for the ram on their site is 11-11-11-30 but cpu-z shows those other timings.

Im booted into OSX right now with the timings set to 11-12-12-32 at 1600MHz and it's not freezing. Maybe it froze in windows because I hadn't yet got the CPU Voltage properly set. Right now I have it at 1.37V and it's stable through benchmarks in OSX.

However, just like last time the RAM at 1600MHz, whether at looser timings or the tighter timings is performing a tad bit slower than at 1333MHz. Here's a pic showing the cinebench CPU results at 1600MHz at the loose timings. I guess this ram's sweet spot is at 1333MHz. What do you think?

 

[x79]

SOLVED

Ok, I figured out the problem.

I was using the older version of Cinebench, so I downloaded the new R15 version. When I ran the CPU test my computer kept freezing in the middle..not so stable after all. So I went back into the bios and raised the voltage up to 1.395V until I was able to successfully complete the test, and then a few more times in a row to make sure.

While I was in the bios I went into the DIGI POWER SETTINGS tab and raised the ram current for all channels up to 120% and enabled extreme phase, which the description says "enables full phase of the ram"…whatever that means, however now my RAM is running at 1600MHz and getting the same higher speeds as it was as 1333MHz!!! I'm a happy overclocker now!

Here is the results of Cinebench R15.. I'm at the top of the charts now for single CPU systems and I'm happy with that!

Thank you for your help!