Upgrade Advice Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P

[Zoue]

well, I'm ordering the 750W version today:

http://www.morecomputers.com/product.aspx?pn=P1-750G-TS3X&man=XFX

The price was too good to pass up. It's cheaper than most stores are selling the 650W version for and only £5 more than the best price I could find for that one. For extra future proofing it seems a no-brainer. Would have preferred the modular XTR version but I would probably have had to do jail time for robbing a bank for that one. In any event, I have a fully wired one now and it's never been a problem.

Of course, the unanticipated hit to my budget has meant me having to revisit the graphics cards. I can't give the boy a PSU as a present, even if it will be good for him. He's not that computer savvy and I don't think he'll be dancing for joy at replacing a component that will to the untrained eye offer no benefits!

So the 280x seems too out of reach now, sadly. Back to the drawing board!

Update: I managed to sort my RAM problem by swapping my sons offending Crucial sticks with the Patriot Viper Red ones in my own PC. The Crucial ones worked fine with my Asus P8H61-MX USB3 (LGA1155) motherboard and after doing a bit of research it seems I'm not the first person to have issues with Crucial RAM and Gigabyte motherboards. Anyone know why they don't seem to gel?

My son's not unhappy as the Patriot RAM is better anyway!

 

[Zoue]

Well, it seems I spoke too soon. It doesn't like the Patriot RAM either, at least not in dual configuration mode. At the moment I'm testing it with a single 4GB DIMM and touch wood it's going fine.

Which brings me to the big question. Can anyone think of any reason why the system crashes any time I try to use more than 4GB RAM? 2 x 2GB sticks? Check. 1 x 4GB sticks? Check. 2 x 4GB sticks? No way Jose. I know 100% that the Patriot DIMMs are in full working order as I've been happily using it on my own PC for the last couple of years. So it must be the motherboard. What possible reason could there be for the slots to reject anything more than 4GB?.

Before anyone asks, I'm running Windows 7 Home premium 64Bit SP1. I tried adjusting the XMP settings to Profile 1 (from Auto), but it didn't help. It's a beautiful looking motherboard with a lot of promise but I'm starting to hate it with a passion

As always, any suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

[Dlaw]

I'm wondering if it's your CPU rather than the board. Try giving your CPU-NB a bump in voltage, that might help.

 

[Zoue]

Thanks for the reply. At this point I'll happily try anything. Any recommended settings?

I think you may be right that the CPU is contributing, but I don't quite understand why my old Asus M4A77T/USB3 ran quite happily while this Gigabyte seems hyper-sensitive. It doesn't appear to like 1600 RAM at all.

 

[Zoue]

Right, I think I may have finally sorted the memory issue, touch wood.

If anyone is interested, I manually downclocked the RAM to 1333 as I read somewhere that the AMD Athlon II X2 260 can't handle RAM above 1333. BUT, unknown to me the system then also changed the timings from 11-11-11-28 default to 9-9-9-24. So it failed again. I then went back into the BIOS and manually adjusted the timings back to the default 11-11-11-28 settings and that seems to have done the trick. Been running for 20 minutes now without an issue, fingers crossed!

 

[knoober]

Right, I think I may have finally sorted the memory issue, touch wood.

If anyone is interested, I manually downclocked the RAM to 1333 as I read somewhere that the AMD Athlon II X2 260 can't handle RAM above 1333. BUT, unknown to me the system then also changed the timings from 11-11-11-28 default to 9-9-9-24. So it failed again. I then went back into the BIOS and manually adjusted the timings back to the default 11-11-11-28 settings and that seems to have done the trick. Been running for 20 minutes now without an issue, fingers crossed!

If you Overclock remember to keep your ram @ 1333 as you raise your cpu clock speed. I'm glad you figured it out, I've really been waiting to see what the fix was here

 

[Zoue]

Me too! Been tearing my hair out trying to get the RAM to work! Who knew it could be so temperamental?