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I'm running a 4Gb Kit (2x2Gb) Corsair XMS3 DHX DDR3-1600 RAM (can't find a product page any more but here's the exact same review I originally read that led me to buy the stuff, that gives hopefully enough detail) on an XFX nForce 790i Ultra Sli motherboard with an Intel Q9650. It was good in its day :)

I noticed the other day whilst also trying to figure out how to overclock it, that the BIOS is auto-configuring the RAM to run at 1067Mhz instead of either 1333, the same as FSB (QDR), or even its rated 1600Mhz. Although I've read over the overclock.net tutorial on intel overlocking and I guess it makes sense that it won't do the latter automatically.

What I want to do is to make the RAM run at its rated speed; and I guess that'll probably mean oc'ing the CPU, but since everything I've read says that the Q9650 overclocks very well I'm not worried about that (indeed oc'ing this old proc for a bit of a boost would be nice!).

The previously linked guide says that achieving 1:1 is important, so is it as simple as setting the FSB(QDR) up to 1600 and then adjusting the CPU multiplier to keep it running at a sensible amount temperature-wise?

Update

I increased the fsb to 1600 and tried playing with the voltages, probably not all the right ones though, and I couldn't get a stable machine. Wouldn't even start! Oh dear my oc'ing abilities are poor!

Second Update

Since then I experienced FileSystem corruption on my RAID-0 array; could get hardly anything off it and then after resigning to rebuild I thought I'd see what Darik's 'Boot and Nuke' did... 0.01% into its operation I realised it was already trashing my disks without asking and I have subsequently lost everything - including my data backups...

I actually did cry.

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  • TL;DR; Please shorten this question down a bit. I suspect there is a decent question or two in there somwehere.
    – Nifle
    Jun 2, 2011 at 14:46
  • @Nifle - have taken the chainsaw to it and got, I think, down to brass tacks. Any improvement? :)
    – Andras Zoltan
    Jun 2, 2011 at 15:02
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    Much better....
    – Nifle
    Jun 2, 2011 at 15:11
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    General overclocking advice for you: change one thing at a time, and make small changes. Also, you may have to relax your memory timings in order to get to 1600. The faster clock, the higher the timings have to be. The modules you have are advertised at 9-9-9-24, so make sure you don't have timings set any lower than that to start with.
    – TM.
    Jun 4, 2011 at 8:12

2 Answers 2

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I bought these memory modules in 2008 and had a lot of trouble getting them to run at rated speed, with the system stable. A Corsair forum post suggested that only certain P45 motherboards would work well. I contacted Corsair and they told me there was a known hardware problem, and that a newer product revision was available - so they agreed to an RMA.

These modules supposedly have a lifetime warranty, so before you start tweaking BIOS settings, it may be worth checking with Corsair if you are entitled to a free update.

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  • Hi - Thanks for your response. I suppose the thing is I've not even tried mucking around with the settings properly yet cuz I'm not entirely sure what to do - all I've done is to link and sync at 1333 with certified timings (9-9-9-24) and everything's fine. Also, looking at the article you mention there - it's related to intel-based boards? Mine is an nVidia nForce.
    – Andras Zoltan
    Jun 2, 2011 at 15:46
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After suffering the torture of having to rebuild my installation from the ground up as well as rebuild a windows backup that had almost been lost due to an accidental partial DBAN - you'd think I'd have given up on this...

Not so! I'm a glutton for punishment!

And in the end, it was just a simple case of switching to 2T from 1T timings, as well as fixing the voltage.

Now running 8Gb of this Corsair RAM happily; no more blue screens or anything - and memory bandwidth is a lot higher than before.

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