How do I get this ram to work with this motherboard?

December 22, 2010 2:25 AM

Please help me get get 12 gigs of OCZ Reaper 1600 DDR 3 to work with an Asus P6X58D-E motherboard and an i7-950.

When I first built my machine I had 6 gigs of OCZ3RPR16006LV6GK RAM. Works find, no detection problems at all. I add 6 more gigs of the same exact thing and my BIOS/Windows reports only 4 gigs of ram installed. My BIOS revision is 0405 and I can't find a newer one for the MoBo. I'm scared of damaging things by just randomly guessing with timing and voltage settings.

I'm not trying to overclock or anything, I just want it to work. I've tried resetting the CPU to no avail. Thank you.

posted by Apoch to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Things to try:

1)Remove the new modules and install the old modules in the former's slots and check. If OK,
2)Remove the old modules, install the new ones in those slots and check.
posted by Gyan at 4:05 AM on December 22, 2010

Response by poster: The RAM all detects as 6 as long as I only have 3 installed.
posted by Apoch at 5:50 AM on December 22, 2010

Set the memory timings and voltage to auto. It might be an option that looks like "memory by spd = yes". But you probably didn't need to change anything if it was the exact same kind of memory.

What size are the DIMMs?

Try booting the machine with only one DIMM at a time installed. I bet one of them won't boot at all.
posted by gjc at 5:53 AM on December 22, 2010

Response by poster: Everything is set to AUTO in the BIOS.

There are 6, 2 gigabyte sticks. The system boots with each stick if it is the only one installed.

If I install 4, the system boots with 8 gigs of ram. If I add the last two it drops to 4 gigs detected.
posted by Apoch at 6:46 AM on December 22, 2010

From the manual, page 2-11:

Due to Intel spec definition, X.M.P. DIMMs and DDR3-1600 are supported for one DIMM per channel only.

Sounds like you might have to manually de-rate them to -1333 to get this to work.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:40 AM on December 22, 2010

Rhomboid's post got me curious and googled. Came across this page:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/267761-30-asus-p6x58d-premium-1366-intel-sata-intel

Some folks have gotten all six banks to run DDR3-1600. Some noted that slot B was bad (not sure what this specifically means).

Also check the Newegg feedback on this product:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131614

I've only begun skimming some of them.

"You should be aware the board isn't spec'd for 1600MHz or above with over 12G of memory (or at least 3x4G)... something I wasn't aware of... but some people seem to have success with it."
posted by liquoredonlife at 7:54 AM on December 22, 2010

Response by poster: I tested out each pair of slots, (with only two sticks in) and it booted, detecting 4 gigs, which is correct, so it isn't a bad slot on the motherboard. I tried setting the freq to 1333, 1030, and 800 all to no avail.
posted by Apoch at 10:02 AM on December 22, 2010

I had a similar problem with my mobo (Asus P5Q) and my RAM (OCZ) when putting 4x2GB, but the symptom was different -- my PC wouldn't boot (or even POST). It turns out that you have to manually set the voltage to a higher setting when you max out the number of RAM slots. For my DDR2 RAM, I had to set it to 2.1v; anything lower and it won't boot, unless I put less than 4 sticks. So it's possible that you will need to manually set the RAM voltage to something higher than the default. Don't go and set yours to 2.1v yet, because I believe that that is much higher than DDR3 spec. IANY PC technician, but it should be possible to safely bump up the RAM voltage on your system by 10-20% over the default setting (whatever that is for DDR3) to test it and see if it works.
posted by Simon Barclay at 5:26 PM on December 22, 2010

Response by poster: Not supposed to go any higher than 1.65 with an i7, might damage it.
posted by Apoch at 7:20 AM on December 23, 2010