GA-X58A-UD7 RAM problem.

[pawmot]

Hello!

I will try to be short. I have a machine built on GA-X58A-UD7 rev.1 with three Corsair XMS3 2GB 1600MHz DDR3 CL9 modules. Out of the box BIOS recognized only 4 GB of RAM memory most of the time. When I removed an module and inserted it again, it recognized 6 GB for 2-3 boots, the reverted to the 4 GB. Win7Ult behaved accordingly (displayed that 3.99 GB of 4 GB is usable). Apart from that the system was stable.

I've updated the bios to F7 - from this moment BIOS properly recognizes 6GB of memory every time. But after 20-30 boots I've got a memory dump when Win7 was initializing. From that day I have to do something bizarre - I have to change the memory frequency every time I boot the machine, cycling through two modes: 1066 MHz and 1600 MHz. If I fail to do that, Windows will crash on initializing reporting memory problems. When I change the frequency, the system is stable and functions well.

I've messed with the memory options in BIOS but to no avail, and frankly - I don't have much time to do it right now.

Maybe someone knows how to fix the problem, or at least how to properly test memory modules in this situation? I'm counting on your help.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Get Memtest86+. Sounds like your RAM is the culprit here. I hope you are running 7 x64.

 

[pawmot]

Yes, I'm running a 64-bit system, forgot to mention that. I'll try the memtest86+ when I'll be at home, i.e. tomorrow or the day after. If one of the modules is messed up I could get it replaced, so it would be good news.

 

[MindoverMaster]

We'll be here.

 

[pawmot]

Hello again!

I've run memtest86+ ver. 4.10 twice. One time, cold boot, I switched the memory frequency (the same way I do every time to assure that the OS starts and behaves correctly) and there was no error. Today morning I run it second time, again on cold boot, I didn't switch the frequency. This time I got a couple thousand errors (two passes). The only thing I don't understand is why the errors occur between 6144MB and 6656MB when I have only 6143MB of RAM memory installed (and memtest confirms that). That seems strange to me. Am I missing something? Does it mean that one of the modules is screwed up (or all of them)? Or does it mean that motherboard has some problems with communicating with them?

Just to pass the complete information - on the first run (with switching) memtest tested the extra I-don't-know-where-it-comes-from 6144MB-6656MB part of RAM memory, but it worked fine. On the second run (w/o switching) when I looked at the error messages it seemed that every time there was a one-byte error - but I looked on only a few of them.

 

[patonb]

As a heads up, theres been alot of issues with x58 boards reading 6gigs of ram. Asus has had this bad, and i've read some gigabyte boards too.

Look to ensure you have the newest bios, and the ram in correctly.