Is my ram the culprit?

267 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by heathmcabee, Mar 7, 2009

Windsong

Discussion Starter · Mar 7, 2009

My question concerns 3 sticks of 1g ram (Kingston 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300). I want to overclock my e8400 to 3.6ghz. I also bought a p5ql mb and a 850 psupply with an arctic freezer 7 cooler.

Question:

Does my ram stick support a dram freq of 400mhz (which I need to set in BIOS to get the 3.6ghz overclock I need), or do I need to go with another brand of ram, say Patriot?

I tried overclocking via BIOS and it crashed within a few secs of booting to desktop. My suspicion is that the ram does not support it.

Under my AI TWeaker menu in BIOS, I set:
FSB Freq: 400mhz
PCIe Freq: 100
FSB Strap to Northbridge to 400
Set dram freq to (this is the part where 400mhz is not an option, it simply says 800, 1000or Auto)

Or maybe the voltage is set too low?

Specs:
e8400 set at default freq.
3gigs of above named ram
ati radeon 3850
4 internal 500 gig hard drives, 1 usb external
p5ql mb
LG dvd writer

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1 - 6 of 6 Posts

heathmcabee

· #2 · Mar 7, 2009

Unlink your ram, put it at 677 and trying upping your FSB and adding more vcore when you can't boot up.

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billbartuska

· #3 · Mar 7, 2009

You can always run any memory slower. The BIOS just has to have the settings available. And you can run tighter timings then too.

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dralb

· #4 · Mar 7, 2009

Run the memory on a divider. If you set the BIOS to run the RAM at the stock speed (by the divider) you will increase that speed when you up the FSB. When you up the FSB to OC the CPU, you need to lower the divider to run the RAM at the same speed while everything else is running faster.

If I were you, I would just buy some faster RAM anyways. It is very cheap and seems to be the weakest point in your PC.

Also, you may be able to OC that RAM to run at 800 speeds, but that would also require upping the voltage and/or loosening the timings.

Quote:

Originally Posted by heathmcabee

Unlink your ram, put it at 677 and trying upping your FSB and adding more vcore when you can't boot up.

I am pretty sure you can only unlink with nvidia chipsets.

edit: OP, I would just get a dual channel kit and do away with the 3 sticks and just run 2. Also, fill in your system specs under the user cp tab at the top of the page.

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Windsong

Discussion Starter · #5 · Mar 7, 2009

Ok, I had thought of upgrading the ram anyways. I have the "value" Kingston ram, and only bought it bc the wife was with me when I did the upgrade in-store from my previous 1.8ghz dual core (memo to me..never again!)

Guess I will go with the higher end Patriot.

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heathmcabee

· #6 · Mar 7, 2009

Patriot makes very good DIMMS. Also Corsair, OCZ, Gskill are some good choices to consider.

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