18 Month Giga-Byte mother board RMA Question

[go.mole]

Hi, I've got a nearly to the day 18 month old Giga-byte P35-DS4 that has developed an issue with the RAM causing BSoDs.

I'm running 4 1GB Corsair sticks and I've memtested them all on their own in slot 1; 2 sticks in slots 1 and 3, then 2 and 4; and finally 4 sticks using all the slots. The only time I'm getting a failed memtest is with all four slots in use.

This is leading me to believe that its something to do with the board and all it not liking all the slots being in use and though I talk about testing in memtest, I also have the symptoms that I can't boot to windows with all the sticks in (i.e. it BSoDs on windows start), were as I can if I just have one in.

I don't think I need to do a bios update as I was running 2 of the sticks for a year and then 4 sticks for 6 months with no issues. This all started in last weeks rather hot temperatures, though the case I'm using is a Antec P182 that had all its fans on full and I had the window open

So really I'm presuming I'm barking up the right tree thinking I need a motherboard RMA and want to know with the board being 18 months old, can I go to scan to initiate the RMA (I live in Liverpool so I can drive over) or do I need to deal with Giga-Byte now

[Agent]

Have you increased the northbridge voltage? That's the cause of most RAM related issues when all slots are populated in my experience.

[go.mole]

Have you increased the northbridge voltage? That's the cause of most RAM related issues when all slots are populated in my experience.

No I haven't and it is inconsistent BSoDs so that could actually be quite a good suggestion

I'll give it a go tomorrow Sadly I've spent all my available time tonight running memtest

[Agent]

Hope it works

My Gigabyte DS3 must have the NB voltage upped with 4 slots in use or it gets the same, BSODs, memory errors ect.

Good luck!

[jamjamm]

Even if you had to deal with GB's RMA service it's not that bad. They have a UK based RMA and very good support compared to let's say ASUS, so if it did come down to that don't worry about it too much. GB's RMA is top notch!

[go.mole]

Hope it works

My Gigabyte DS3 must have the NB voltage upped with 4 slots in use or it gets the same, BSODs, memory errors ect.

Good luck!

Well for the last few days I've played with my motherboard, ram and last night swapped for larger PSU my brother had (550w instead of 500w)

So far I've not been able to get my motherboard to run all four sticks stable at 1066 as it has done for the last 6 months. I've upped the RAM voltage to 2.1v and the northbridge +0.1v, but it's still BSoDing after less than 2 minutes in windows and producing lots of errors in Memtest.

If I change the ram to run at 800 instead of 1066 then it will run happy and stable and I've looked on the memory support list on the Giga-Byte site; it lists my memory as only being supported whilst using 2 sticks and not 4, so I think I'm going to have just live the RAM running at 800.

I changed the PSU as a few weeks back I swapped my 9800GTX for a HD4870 and thought that could have been the root of the problems, but the PSU didn't change a thing. I'm not evening running much in the way of expansion cards either, just a wireless NIC and 2 hard drives.

It just confuses me why this week it has started to moan were originally it was running perfectly fine without having to do any voltage tweaks Is it just that my luck ran out getting the 4 sticks to run, or is it my mother board actually developing a fault?