AW9D-Max and 8GB of ram (4 DIMMS)

[SethG911]

Recently I upgrade from 4GB to 8GB of ram ( 2x Gskill F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ) on my AW9D-Max board, and E6600 processor (overclocked to 3.0Ghz). My other specs can be seen in my profile dropdown. Everything was running great until I actually switched to a 64 bit OS. Then I started noticing a lot of program hiccups, occasional blue-screens and an odd tick noise and whirr every now and then from inside my case which sounded like power being cut or applied to a component. The system runs rock solid with 4GB in Windows 7 64 bit and passes all ORTHOS, Prime95, windows memtest, and memtest 86+ test flawlessly using the below settings:





When I add in another 2 DIMMS of identical memory to total 8GB I begin running in to issues. I have tried adjusting memory timings, voltages, MCH voltages.... pretty much everything I can think of. The only way I can get it remotely stable is by cranking settings beyond what I feel are safe limits. But even then it does not pass tests and only makes it through 1 pass of memtest86+ and fails on the second. It seems stable in windows and the hiccups and blue-screens are gone but it really irks me that it is not passing tests. Please let me know if I am overlooking something or if any of you have prior experience slapping 8GB of ram on this board. Here are my stable-ish "unsafe" settings to work from (bear in mind I am currently using my solid settings listed above and only 4 GB right now as I feel the settings below are risky):




Thanks in advance for any help or advice you can provide!

[SethG911]

Solved! Ok so I systematically went through and checked each setting and how it affected ORTHOS performance. I started with the stable settings i used for 4GB. The final settings I ended up with I am very happy about. They are far less stressful that the ones I had previously tried.

Final setup:

CPU Voltage: 1.375
DDR2 Voltage: 2.1 (compensates for the 4 Dimms full, and the temps stay similar to running at 1.9 on 2 Dimms alone)
MCH Voltage: 1.60 (considerably lower)

Memory Timings: 5-5-5-18-43 (The 18 instead of a 13 or a 15 made all the difference, this and the uppage of volts in the DDR2)

I hope a few other people with this board can find this post and it will help them as well.