asus M5A97 and sniper series?

[crazyj23]

has anyone had any luck running any of the sniper series ram on their asus M5A97? specifically the F3-12800CL9Q-16GBSR1 (1.35v) or the F3-12800CL9Q-16GBSR (1.5) kits? (newegg doesn't seem to have the GBSR2 (1.25) kit that pops up on the QVL ***edit, they do, but it only comes in 8gb pairs, no 4 dimm kits) it will be paired with a athlon ii 640 to start and i'll down clock the ram, but will eventually upgrade the processor down the road...thanks for any help

[Tradesman]

On AMD, might be better with 2x4GB set, with only two sticks it'll be less stress on the MC (Memory Controller)

[GSKILL TECH]

Any of those kits will work just fine. You'll probably need to run them at DDR3-1333 8-8-8-24 or 9-9-9-24 at first, then you can attempt higher with an upgraded CPU.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[crazyj23]

thanks...unfortunately i jumped on a 16gb kit of the ripjaws yesterday...had a 15% off coupon and the GBRL series are on the asus QVL list to run in all 4 dimms, so i figured they were safer and might cause a little less trial and error to get them setup right

[GSKILL TECH]

Great, it'll be no problem at all, just let us know if you do encounter an issue.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[Tradesman]

We'll be waiting to hear

[crazyj23]

well, i got the ram today, so far, things seem to be running relatively good...booted up the first time without a problem, detected all 4 dimms even set the speed to 1600, just at 11-11-11-28 timing...i adjusted it to 9-9-9-24 and it still seemed fine, but all of that was under the knoppix live cd, still need win7 64...but, i did try hooking up a first gen sata drive (the kind with both molex and sata power) that has win xp pro on it...BSOD...tried lowering the speed down to 1066, same deal...granted, i wasn't really expecting it to boot considering it was winxp that was set up for another system, and i've also read that older sata drives don't always play well with sata 3 controllers...so we'll see how things pan out once i do a legit OS install

[Tradesman]

Yep, an XP setup from another rig will be lost, the drive may still be usable though, the ports would be backward compatible, though I'd stick it on a SATA II port, putting it on SATA III won't improve it any. The real performance increase you'll get from a SATA III port will be with a SATA III SSD.

[crazyj23]

yeah, my plan is to go SSD, i've seen some 120gb drives hovering around $1 a gb, which feels reasonable, although i know in 6 months, a year, the price will be half that, but that's life when it comes to technology, ha, ha...and unfortunately, all the ports on my MB are sata 3...but i think within the next 2 weeks i'll have my OS and boot drive and be ready to roll

[Tradesman]

An option for a speed boost on the SSD would be go with a pair of SATA III drives (if thinking 120GB, maybe 2 60s or 64s) and put them in RAID.....As an example I've got a pair of SATA II 120 Sniper SSDs that are rated up to 285MB sequential read, and in RAID 0 it's more like 400MB+, with SATA III drive would be even much better, have seen them do over 650MB+

[crazyj23]

i think even an ssd in and of itself might be a little overkill for my needs, basic computer stuff, mixed with some occasional 3d rendering, autocad, photoshop and premiere work, and having never really worked on true "workstation" class machines ever, minus a sun p3 powered machine back over 10 years ago, i think the speed difference between an ssd and a 7200k drive will easily blow me away, ha, ha

[crazyj23]

btw, one step closer, ordered win 7 tonight, only one more piece left to the puzzle

[Tradesman]

Win7 64 Home Premium or better? That's the lowest that will support 16GB (which is it's limit also)

[crazyj23]

64 pro so i can have the xp pro mode to run older software if needed

[Tradesman]

Good, we've seen some folks get versions that won't support the amount of DRAM they want to install, just wanted to catch it early for you if you weren't aware...but obviously you are