F3-12800cl9d-4gbrl - Reboot problems

[Renrah]

Model of the motherboard: Asus M4A87TD EVO
Model of the memory: 2 sets of G.Skill Ripjaw 4gb (2x2gb) F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL
Model of the CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz

Nothing is overheating, I got a program to watch CPU temp and GPU temp and both were under max operating temperatures at their highest, and my PSU is 780 watts.

What is the problem?
I bought all the above at once for a new build and have only had problems since. I have built a handful of computers for friends and a couple others with friends, so I know what's what and such but I'm no hardcore overclocker or anything.

When I first assembled it all and got it up and running, anytime I would do anything requiring my RAM to actually work, it would reboot. No blue screen or anything, my screen would just go black and then go to BIOS and boot up into Windows again. (Put out errors 6008 and 41 in windows event viewer)

I then started looking things up and found http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=7688 (while doing this I noticed that the stupid auto-overclocking software with my mb put my RAM to settings it shouldn't have been at, timings and voltage). I set my settings within my BIOS to the settings shown in method 2. After that it was running much much better, I got it going and transferred some files to it and such and it ran for a solid 9 hours until it did a random reboot once again. Wanting to be sure all my hardware is working properly before I can no longer get an RMA from newegg.com, I downloaded both memtest86+ and PRIME95 to run some tests and see if it held up.

I ran 4 copies of memtest86+ at once each with 1640mb of RAM tested. I let it go through to 100% coverage on my RAM (one passing). And everything held up fine with no errors.
Then I went to run PRIME95 and had a different experience. I attempted to do a Blend (tests "some of everything, lots of RAM") and it went for like 10 seconds and did the reboot thing again.. I ran some of the other tests in PRIME95 just to see if they worked and I started and let all of the other tests run for like 10 minutes each, and they didn't cause a crash, only the Blend did. Wanting stability I changed the settings in my BIOS to method 1 from the post above and I think I did something wrong because my BIOS had an error message saying overclock failed, so I changed it back to method 2.


And here I am, posting to see if any of you have any ideas or suggestions as to what the problem could be (between my mb, cpu or RAM). I am completely open to running any tests in finding what the problem is. I would greatly appreciate the help, thanks.

[Renrah]

Bump...? Anyone there?

[NemesisChild]

First of all, do you have the C2 or C3 Revision 965? (Use CPU-Z to verify).
Have you updated your bios lately?
Are you overclocking your 965?
What PSU (brand & model number) are you using?

First, set your PC not to reboot after a system failure, google on how to do this.
Make note of the error code, then google it.
Now, move the two sticks to the outside dual channel slots, furthest away from the CPU.
Clear your CMOS...important!
Manually enter your memory timings and voltage in the bios.
If the problem persists, raise your DRAM voltage to 1.55v and you may need to increase your CPU/NB voltage as well.

[Renrah]

Revision RB-C3
I just bought the Motherboard, and checked it and it had the latest version.
No overclocking.
Zalman APEVIA ICEBERG ATX-IB680W-BL - Apparently it is 680w not 780.

Just set it to not reboot.
I have 4 sticks of RAM, 2x above product number.
I am currently using memtest86+ to test each individual stick of RAM, should I continue with that or clear CMOS and plug all back in?
Timings are all manually entered according to post listed in my original post.

***Just noticed in BIOS that the stick of RAM I have in and just tested says the model # is F3-12800CL9-2GBRL when the RAM I ordered was F3-12800CL9-4GBRL, doesn't make a difference, does it?

[NemesisChild]

Oh I see now that you're running 4x2GB, sorry I didn't pick up on that before.
As long as you haven't messed with other settings, you shouldn't have to clear the CMOS for now.
You're doing the right thing, test each stick with memtest individually.
See what CPU-Z reports the model number for that one stick.

Since you're running with all dimms populated (8GB), you will definitely need to bump up your CPU/NB voltage.

I'm not familiar with that PSU and would focus on it as being a possible culprit.

[Renrah]

It's all good, I appreciate the help.
Okay I just tested them all, and all of them but one stick was causing freezes while running memtest86+, going to plug it into a different slot and test it again.
Okay, I may try the CPU-NB voltage bump, but it's at 1.2v right now and in my BIOS it displays that number as yellow. Is that bad?

[NemesisChild]

With 1600 memory, your CPU/NB frequency should be set to 2600MHz.

CPU/NB voltage should be around 1.25v.

[Renrah]

Just got done retesting the first that caused a lock up in a different slot than last time and it did the same thing again. Got about 24% coverage and then my PC froze. I'm assuming this means I have a dead memory chip on that stick?

Is there a possibility of any other problems? Or is that probably the issue here? I'd like to find all problems asap before I can't RMA things anymore.

On the post made by GSKILL TECH about DDR3 1600 RAM and AMD CPUs it says to set the CPU-NB Frequency to 2400Mhz, should I keep it there or set it to 2600Mhz?
And I'll bump the CPU-NB Voltage up .05

[NemesisChild]

Just got done retesting the first that caused a lock up in a different slot than last time and it did the same thing again. Got about 24% coverage and then my PC froze. I'm assuming this means I have a dead memory chip on that stick?

Is there a possibility of any other problems? Or is that probably the issue here? I'd like to find all problems asap before I can't RMA things anymore.

On the post made by GSKILL TECH about DDR3 1600 RAM and AMD CPUs it says to set the CPU-NB Frequency to 2400Mhz, should I keep it there or set it to 2600Mhz?
And I'll bump the CPU-NB Voltage up .05

2400-2600 CPU/NB is perfectly fine.
I suggest removing the set with the stick that looks bad, then the test the other set.
If all looks ok with the other set, then I would RMA the bad set.

[Renrah]

Okay, will do. I'm actually currently testing all but the one bad stick of RAM. Should I not be doing just one stick of a set?
Should I just RMA through newegg (where I bought it)? Or through G.Skill?

[NemesisChild]

Remember, the sticks are tested and sold as sets, with your memory, it's two sticks per set.
Like I said before, pull out the set with the bad stick and test the other set.
If you're still in the return time period with Newegg, then just RMA that set for a replacement.

[Renrah]

Started PRIME 95 about 3 hours ago doing a blend test with 3 of the sticks in and it hasn't had any issues so I'm pretty sure all my problems came from that bad stick.
Requested a RMA from newegg a bit ago on a set of the RAM.
One last question, is it absolutely necessary to ship RAM in an anti-static bag? I don't remember it being in an anti-static bag when it came in.

[NemesisChild]

No, an anti-static bag is not needed.

[Renrah]

Sweet, thanks for everything.
Ran a Prime 95 test for 9 hours last night and it ran fine, but it was stopped when I woke up in the morning, checked event viewer and the only error was a failure to boot some driver, which was a different error than the two I would get from my reboots. Checked windows update and saw that it updated at 3am last night.. /Facepalm.
So all my problems were from that one stick of RAM and I'm RMAing it now.