Phenon II 940 boot problem with M2n32-SLI and Crucial Ballistix memory

[xemnej]

I decided to go to a Phenom II X4 940 and use it in my ASUS M2n32-SLI Deluxe (BIOS 2205), with Crucial Ballistix Tracer 800 (2 X 2Gb - I cant use both modules for 4 GB only 2 GB - tired everything). Everything worked fine, so I then decided to tinker with overclocking (I am new to OC). Things worked for a while, so of course I kept tinkering. Things worked out OK, I only OCed by about 10% and the machine shut down fine last night. However this morning the board will not boot to POST unless I clear the CMOS, and put in older memory. Once it boots and I change the date, time etc, the reboot never gets back to POST and then boot. However, should I not enter the info I can boot into the OS. I tried reflashing the BIOS and that did nothing. I have rebooted a number of times and unless I change the memory, clear the CMOS and boot at that point I cannot boot to POST and beyond that to the OS.

So has anyone run into this? Short of getting an ASUS M4A79 Deluxe AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX, which is likely my next step, is there anything I can do to solve the problem of getting the CPU to boot with the Crucial memory? Of course I would appreciate any help. The drives are good, the PS is good, no problems on the motherboard or anything like that. And as I said I am new to OC, so I don't pretend to be an expert. My thanks in advance.

 

[boucher91]

you will prolly have to go in and manually set the crucial mem in the bios.
save settings and exit , turn it off put mem in then boot, go to bios and ensure settings are correct...
the ballstix like alot of power usually default is not enough...
hope this helps

 

[nzaneb]

Did you enter the memory timings, voltage, and speed manually in the BIOS? What slots did you put the ram in? Running Ganged or Unganged?

Also, even though it might not seem like it, posting the rest of your system specs may help in trouble shooting the problem.

 

[xemnej]

Hum, OK guys give me a bit and I will post a detail of my setup. My thanks for these leads. Since I am quite the neophyte to overclocking, I used the most conservative settings. I have the memory in the first slot. I did move it from slot to slot, but that didn't help. I even took out the memory to see if the motherboard sensed that no memory was present and it did. I got am immediate beeping. As far as power I have in that machine an older Antec 450 W, but I did just get a Cooler Master UCP 1100 W power supply for another PC build.

 

[QuietIce]

I don't think it was the PSU he was talking about but the vDIMM (aka RAM voltage). Personally I'm surprised Crucial is even on the QVL for an ASUS board - they really don't play well together. If possible you might want to try Corsair or OCZ, they both work very well with ASUS boards ...

 

[nzaneb]

Don't trust your motherboard to correctly recognize the recommended RAM settings. These should be set manually to ensure compliance. The recommended timings and voltage should be on a sticker on the side of the RAM, or you can get them off of crucials website. And as QuietIce stated, it may not work still... are they listed on the QVL for your M2n32-SLI ?

 

[QuietIce]

Crucial is on there (hence my surprise) but only one type and I don't know if it's the Ballistics or not. Looking my post over this morning does leave some doubt, doesn't it? But I also know from experience that Crucial just doesn't work well with ASUS boards so even if they are on there I wouldn't expect them to OC as well as some others ...