A little Rig update

Lelisevis

Thought i'd give you a little update on my SLI memory issue. Firstly a big thanks to RyderOCZ who did try to help and arranged my RMA. +1 rep

It's got me beat LMAO i've given up. Sent off my 2 old sticks and 2 weeks later (good old royal mail) I received a UPS package from OCZ holland.
Tore the package open and dashed to the pc room, whipped the side off my case and installed the 2 new sticks...beeeeeeeeep...bugger.

Took out the old RAM sticks and booted into windows with just the new ones, saved a copy of the new SPD and compared it to the set I bought in April, 2 or 3 differences including voltage (1.9v and 2.1v on epp) and Trc (19 on the RMA set and 22 on Aprils set). This rules out the board detecting it as SLI. Don't think it'll make that much of a difference and it's probably unrelated but the sticks my wife bought me in April are on a black PCB and the set I had returned from RMA are on green PCB's (the same colour as the set I sent in but with a different holographic sticker).

Tried flashing the spd's so they are all identical using 3 different SPD's (old 1066, april 1066 and the RMA 1066 spd), each time I so much as looked at the SLI option in my bios I get a massive beeeeep and it freezes at DET RAM on my fault module. Can't set it manually either without getting the same error. Obviously the chips have different requirements to run.

I don't blame OCZ, I guess it's just one of those things. I should have invested in 4gb from the off, trying to match 2 packs of RAM bought at separate times has just resulted in me getting a bit of a headache.

Just in case anyones curious I did ring my friend Pete who was good enough to bring over his 4x1gb sticks of OCZ 1066 memory (which ironically I ordered for his build in February) to see if it was a board issue but it booted and ran fine, unfortunately I was unable to switch them without him noticing.

Can't be bothered with the whole RMA process again with no guarantee of sucess so I guess for now i'm confined to 667mhz..........until I manage to save up.

So much for the following blurb quoted from the nvidia site:

Certified SLI-Ready Memory
NVIDIA SLI-Ready system memory certification ensures compatibility and system stability with the rest of the SLI ecosystem components including NVIDIA nForce SLI motherboards, NVIDIA GeForce GPUs, and SLI-Ready power supplies. SLI-Ready memory also supports Enhanced Performance Profiles (EPP) 1.0 and 2.0. When paired with a compatible NVIDIA nForce 790i, 780i, 680i SLI, 680i LT SLI or 590 SLI AMD edition-based motherboards, SLI-Ready memory exposes advanced performance memory settings.
Only memory that pass NVIDIA SLI certification can be called "NVIDIA SLI-Ready certified." Be sure to look for the NVIDIA SLI-Ready badge when you buy your system memory.




Recently posted a topic asking what case I should get for my birthday. Well in the end common sense took hold and I realised I was changing for changes sake.
So instead I invested my money in a high interest savings account................yeah right!

Being unimpressed with the feeble heatpipe cooling solution on my budget asus P5N32-E SLI Plus motherboard I decided to take a trip to my local hardware store (just to look of course, I mean really it's always just to look isn't it).
30 minutes later I left carrying a number of varying size boxes. The list comprised of:

Asus Striker II Formula motherboard
A further 2gb of OCZ PC8500 Nvidia SLI RAM
Windows Vista Home premium 64
750GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 HDD

Now the hard bit, I had to hand them to my wife so she could wrap them up for my birthday. 8 days I waited all the time knowing what lay at the bottom of the wardrobe (in amongst numerous shoes - unworn and bags - uncarried, women sheesh).

Finally the big day came and with a shudder at the thought of turning 30 I set about opening my new toys. After fully cleaning out my case I set about building monster rig mk2. Setting aside the boring build stuff lets jump straight into the pictures before I add one or two more notes at the end.

Out with the old.....


In with the new......




A few notes:

I can finally touch the heatpiped chipsets, something that was impossible without a visit to the burns unit on my previous board.
The Asus Striker II is without a doubt the best motherboard I have ever had the pleasure of installing, it's aesthetically pleasing, stable as hell and is the first motherboard i've encountered with a useable set of windows based tools in the form of AI Suite which is 100% stable and provides on the fly overclocking profiles. The included sound card is a step up from the usual flat sounding onboard cards ( yes I know technically it's onboard but it's certainly useable).

My Q6600 at 2.4ghz now idles at 36-38C per core, with some minor overclocking to 2.8ghz it raises a further 1-2C. This is some 5c's lower than my previous board which i'm attributing to the cooler chipsets and higher quality board components/ power phase usage.

The fan cooling the RAM is on a custom made bracket and is the fan from a X2 AMD heatsink with an Asus sticker on it. It's largely unnecessary due to the boards 2 phase Ram power supply.

Yes thats four hard-drives totalling 1.3TB or so. I have windows vista 64 and pictures, movies and music etc on the samsung F1 and my games on a pair of striped 160gb spinpoints. Don't ask me why but it made sense in my head and definitely works as everything loads quicker than ever.

I've broken 15,000 marks in 3dmark '06.

OCZ have once again stirred my wrath, they have recently decided to switch IC's on their RAM sticks......this means those looking to use epp profiles on 4 sticks bought seperately are up shit creek. I flashed the SPD's but could not get things 100% stable with random bluescreens and freezes. I have had to re-flash to the original profiles and despite manually setting the timings over a whole weekend have had to leave things at auto for the sake of my sanity. My 4gb of 1066mhz Ram now runs at just over 700mhz. Another sour OCZ experience.



Well if you've stuck with it this far then I'll thank you and ask you to press the little button at the bottom and leave a comment (even if it's just to call me your favourite expletive).

Lel

kris23

dunno how good nvidia is at handling RAM....

IEMC

Envious? Hell yes I am.

Have fun with it

[hobo]eclipse

nice pics, the distorted striker 2 formula reflection in the OMGWTFGFGSAUCE gpu is cool! bummer to hear about the RAM situation, good luck with that, maybe contacting someone at OCZ could help, they are pretty good about customer service IMHO (atleast they were a few years back when i had a few RMA's)

what case might that be? a coolermaster varient? looks nice and roomy
did the same thing with my back case fan port a while back, cuts down on some uneeded noise. I'd like to see case manufactures have a removable fan grill back there, especially when so many of the cases i've seen have a very tight honeycomb pressed grill that can be loud.

just glancing at HDDs lately some samsumg spin points caught my eye. I'm not brand loyal when it comes to HDD (yet!), so im curious as to how the Samsung's hold up performance and reliability wise.

Judas

I have issues running various memory modules in almost any configuration that involes 4x sticks of ram on an nforce motherboard....

Running the exact same sticks on an intel p35/x38 has resulted in zero issues and overall better overclocking capabilities (go figure? )

btw.. can't beleive you bought, then had someone else wrap.. and then waited 8 days to use the suckers lol

Lelisevis

Thanks all for the comments

The case is the very first original Thermaltake Armor aluminium. It certainly is one pretty large case. The newer models come with a large side fan but i've modified my case window and fitted a 120mm fan which directs cool air directly into the path of the Ultima 90i and the RAM.

Samsung Spinpoint F1's are probably one of the best hdd's available at the moment. Excellent 118mb/s throughput, 46c drive surface temp and low energy consumption of 6.8-12.2W, all coupled with near silent operation. The terabyte drive only uses 3 platters.

I've pretty much given up on the RAM issue, it's already been acknowledged by OCZ as tough luck, your problem not ours. They did make some SPD's available which I have tried but it's had mixed results with users and in my case came at the cost of stability. I guess i'll have to live with it. I'm only really losing out on the enhanced timings but leaving it at auto has the advantage of running 5-5-5-15 at 1T which gives me a vista RAM score of 5.4 and it hasn't affected my 3dmark score.

RyderOCZ

Lelisevis,

I checked out the OCZ forum and did not see anything mentioned. Have you been corresponding with me regarding this problem?

I can get your ram tested by Tony on a striker II formula and if they are not working right, we replace them, simple as that.

Thanks

swimtech

A "little" rig update - yeah... Now, THAT's a nice way to celebrate turning thirty!!!

RyderOCZ's tier 3 support (!) offer looks like just what the doctor ordered for you!

If you ever decide to push the frequencies on that machine, I'd love to hear about it.

Samsung sure has come a long way in a lot of areas the last twenty years...

Lelisevis

In hindsight Ryder I acknowledge that I posted when the angry monster was stomping around my head. The post I refer to is EVGA 780I/680i 4x1GB DDR1066 setup guide - OCZ Forum which is not just limited to EVGA boards but any board with the 780i chipset.

Just to try to save face a little bit I was refering to the comment on your board which i'll post below:

' 3 Recently we changed IC's on our 1066 and 1150 modules, they are NOT micron based. if you are planning on adding a second 2GB kit to an old kit you have had for longer than 3 months I suggest you either buy 4 matching new modules or buy a 2x2GB kit and sell the older 2GB kit...harsh I know but it will save you headaches in the future.'

The switch in IC's has resulted in the chips being read as unmatched meaning that SLI mode is greyed out and setting at anything above 667mhz (will not even hit 800mhz) means instant BSOD and most of the time it will not even boot past the bios. I have confirmed this by flashing all four chips to both the old and new SPD which did enable SLI and allow the higher frequencies but was highly unstable.

I do appreciate you taking the time to post

Many thanks Lel

RyderOCZ

Ok...so allowing me to save face a little bit, nobody told you specifically we wouldn't help. You read the sticky post and decided that we wouldn't help.

You have RMA instructions in your PM box for the older kit. RMA it and OCZ will send out a new kit to match your new kit and everything should be just fine

Thank you.

Lelisevis

You have no need to save face good sir, it was me acting like an asshole and typing before putting my brain in gear. PM sent

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

ocztony

Any ram manufacturer will have to change IC's at some time, Micron, Elpida, Samsung etc etc all change die revision and manufacturing process quite frequently...so we do our best to make sure you can mix and match but quite often the case is you can not.

I posted that thread in the hope people would read before they buy... and buy wisely. I was brutally honest there in saying you would do better to sell the old kit and buy all new as this is the only way to make sure you narrow down issues as far as you can.

OEM system builders use ram from same batches and hold stock back from batches for RMA...its simply that important.

Ryder will make sure you get looked after, OCZ always look after customers best we can. The move to 4GB and Vista64 has kicked up quite a few issues not only for OCZ but motherboard manufacturers also, I will say it pays to research and not buy/build blind as you need to be sure what you hope to achieve is achievable.

Note, if you have flashed the new kit and the old kit,you will need to flash the kit you get from RMA to the same spd on the new kit you already flashed...you can either save the spd off the new RMA kit and flash the newer pair you already have..IE flash back to shipping spd, or flash the RMA pair to the SPD off the forum.

[hobo]eclipse

Good to see OCZ still coming through with the great service! I'm sure having the same RAM should help compatibility wise and ease the strain on the board a lil.

Lelisevis

Thought i'd give you a little update on my SLI memory issue. Firstly a big thanks to RyderOCZ who did try to help and arranged my RMA. +1 rep

It's got me beat LMAO i've given up. Sent off my 2 old sticks and 2 weeks later (good old royal mail) I received a UPS package from OCZ holland.
Tore the package open and dashed to the pc room, whipped the side off my case and installed the 2 new sticks...beeeeeeeeep...bugger.

Took out the old RAM sticks and booted into windows with just the new ones, saved a copy of the new SPD and compared it to the set I bought in April, 2 or 3 differences including voltage (1.9v and 2.1v on epp) and Trc (19 on the RMA set and 22 on Aprils set). This rules out the board detecting it as SLI. Don't think it'll make that much of a difference and it's probably unrelated but the sticks my wife bought me in April are on a black PCB and the set I had returned from RMA are on green PCB's (the same colour as the set I sent in but with a different holographic sticker).

Tried flashing the spd's so they are all identical using 3 different SPD's (old 1066, april 1066 and the RMA 1066 spd), each time I so much as looked at the SLI option in my bios I get a massive beeeeep and it freezes at DET RAM on my fault module. Can't set it manually either without getting the same error. Obviously the chips have different requirements to run.

I don't blame OCZ, I guess it's just one of those things. I should have invested in 4gb from the off, trying to match 2 packs of RAM bought at separate times has just resulted in me getting a bit of a headache.

Just in case anyones curious I did ring my friend Pete who was good enough to bring over his 4x1gb sticks of OCZ 1066 memory (which ironically I ordered for his build in February) to see if it was a board issue but it booted and ran fine, unfortunately I was unable to switch them without him noticing.

Can't be bothered with the whole RMA process again with no guarantee of sucess so I guess for now i'm confined to 667mhz..........until I manage to save up for 2x2gb or maybe even 2x4gb and yes i'll be sticking with OCZ as I had no issues at all with my RAM prior to this.

So much for the following blurb quoted from the nvidia site:

Certified SLI-Ready Memory
NVIDIA SLI-Ready system memory certification ensures compatibility and system stability with the rest of the SLI ecosystem components including NVIDIA nForce SLI motherboards, NVIDIA GeForce GPUs, and SLI-Ready power supplies. SLI-Ready memory also supports Enhanced Performance Profiles (EPP) 1.0 and 2.0. When paired with a compatible NVIDIA nForce 790i, 780i, 680i SLI, 680i LT SLI or 590 SLI AMD edition-based motherboards, SLI-Ready memory exposes advanced performance memory settings.
Only memory that pass NVIDIA SLI certification can be called "NVIDIA SLI-Ready certified." Be sure to look for the NVIDIA SLI-Ready badge when you buy your system memory.

RyderOCZ

You have me very confused here.

What SPD did you flash? Why did you flash the new sticks?

The new sticks (by themselves) did not work right out of the box?

popcornhobo

YAH your not the only one VERY! confused
I am having the same issue but after reading all that still have NO idea how to fix it... does OCz let you send in your old and they send you new or something in that area, because two of my four gigs of ram are about a year old and the other are only about a week they are not running any were near as fast as they should and are running at different speeds and voltages and from the sounds of it the only way to fix it is to try and sell all four gigs i have and buy 4 new ones or sell the old two and buy two new ones which doesn't sound very fun

Lelisevis

Wow holy dead thread resurrection batman LMAO.

Sorry Ryder buddy this one didnt show up in my subscribed threads for some reason.
The two new sticks did run from the box when installed alone. Even hit 1066mhz. I loaded CPU-Z and noted down all the timings and voltages. I then took them out and installed my two older sticks which also ran alone at 1066mhz. Loaded CPU-Z and wrote all the timings and voltages down.

Inserted all four sticks and the system runs but with the RAM at 333mhz, SLI is greyed out in the bios. Comparing the two CPU-Z results for the old and new sticks shows some glaring differences. The old sticks take 2.1v to achieve EPP while the new take 1.9v to achieve the same profile. On top of that some of the timings are different between the two sets according to the SPD's.