Just bad luck or should I stick with 1.5v ram?

[Tequila]

When I upgraded my rig a few weeks back it included 2 sticks of Corsair Vengeance Pro 16gb 1.65v @ 2400. Everything was fine until this weekend when I noticed a few random reboots that became annoying. Then finally on sunday it got to a point where my system could barely stay up long enough to look at the Event Viewer before the computer would restart on me. I swapped out my corsair sticks for my previous trusty Crucial Ballistix 1.5v @ 1600 and it has been rock solid since then. I haven't run a memtest on the corsair sticks but will try to find time to do it overnight this week.

One thing that bugged me is how high the voltage got on the corsair sticks. Asus AI Suite was reporting 1.67-1.68v.

If I get more high speed ram again I think I'll stick to 1.5v. Thinking about these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148740
Anyone know any 2400mhz 1.5v sticks?


Thanks,

 

[Kenmitch]

Most if not all of the current higher clocked DDR3 is just factory overclocked out of the box. The higher voltage pretty much is the give away.

The Corsair in question would most likely run at the same speed as the ones you linked.

When shopping for ram I usually look at the voltage vs the speed. If I don't have to pay xtra for the speed then I'll buy it. Last go around I bought some DDR3 2133 1.6v as it was on sale for cheaper than the 1866. I just down clocked it to the same specs as the 1866 1.5v offering as I figured 1.6v's is pushing it for Haswell.

 

[G73S]

Any new haswell CPU/motherboard runs on 1.35V RAM, anything higher might work, but it will fry the motherboard with time

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Unless something has changed since socket-1155, I might wonder if you had adjusted your VCCIO voltage to stay within 0.5V of the RAM setting. There is also an upper limit on VCCIO -- about 1.2V for SB and IB cores as far as I know -- possibly also for Haswell.

This was something I didn't like about "out of the box" OC'd RAM spec'd at 1.60 to 1.65V.

You're more likely to see any benefits to performance RAM modules with a socket 1150 rig; for my Z68 socket-1155, the improvement tops out at DDR2-1866. And I had found some G.SKILLs at the 1866 spec which need only 1.5V.

Given those various considerations, and if there isn't something amiss about your VCCIO setting, you should expect a RAM kit to run reliably at its spec settings. Only after assuring that the kit meets that standards, you might then choose to underclock them at tighter latency settings -- to avoid the greater stress to the IMC or other vulnerabilities addressed in the Intel limit. I thought that limit was about 1.58V, but I wouldn't know for sure with a Haswell skt-1150 system.

 

[Coup27]

Any new haswell CPU/motherboard runs on 1.35V RAM, anything higher might work, but it will fry the motherboard with time

Err, what? Rubbish.

The JEDEC standard states a voltage of 1.5v is recommended and if you look at any motherboard qualified vendor list (QVL), you'll see memory ranging from 1.3v up to 1.65v, with one QVL I saw showing RAM up to 1.7v.

Download link for the QVL for my motherboard
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1150/H81I-PLUS/H87I-PLUS_H81I-PLUS_Q87I_PLUS_DIMM_report.pdf

 

[RamCity]

When I upgraded my rig a few weeks back it included 2 sticks of Corsair Vengeance Pro 16gb 1.65v @ 2400. Everything was fine until this weekend when I noticed a few random reboots that became annoying. Then finally on sunday it got to a point where my system could barely stay up long enough to look at the Event Viewer before the computer would restart on me. I swapped out my corsair sticks for my previous trusty Crucial Ballistix 1.5v @ 1600 and it has been rock solid since then.

If you purchase enough RAM you are eventually going to run into a faulty module or two, and even the best manufacturers still have an RMA rate somewhere around 1%. Factory testing catches most issues, but not all of them, and sometimes there are environmental factors after you purchased (ESD, sudden changes in temperature) that can render RAM faulty.

I'm not saying that's what's happened here, but so often people tell me they want to swap brands of RAM because they encountered a faulty one, when really there was no real problem with the brand they bought, it was just bad luck.

Rod

 

[bryanl]

If you purchase enough RAM you are eventually going to run into a faulty module or two, and even the best manufacturers still have an RMA rate somewhere around 1%. Factory testing catches most issues, but not all of them, and sometimes there are environmental factors after you purchased (ESD, sudden changes in temperature) that can render RAM faulty.

I'm not saying that's what's happened here, but so often people tell me they want to swap brands of RAM because they encountered a faulty one, when really there was no real problem with the brand they bought, it was just bad luck.

Which of the following are more likely related to failures:

ESD or 1.65V recommended voltage? 1.65V
High ΔT/Δt or 1600 MHz chips operated at 2400? 1600 @ 2400
Samsung or Corsair? Corsair.

 

[bononos]

Which of the following are more likely related to failures:

ESD or 1.65V recommended voltage? 1.65V
High ΔT/Δt or 1600 MHz chips operated at 2400? 1600 @ 2400
Samsung or Corsair? Corsair.

I agree. There seems to be more problems with high speed Corsair memory. The Vengeance had higher return rates according to the stats from the French site.

 

[Z15CAM]

The thing is anymore then 1.5v can kill the MPC, that is the CPU's Memory Controller, in an Intel Processor.

 

[Tequila]

Thanks for all the responses.

When you say anything more than 1.5 can kill the MPC are you talking permanent damage? Is there anything I can do to verify that the MPC is ok? I still haven't had a chance to run memtest on the corsair sticks but the crucial sticks have defintely solved the problem

Staying away from anything greater than 1.5v in the future

 

[Topweasel]

I want to second that accross the board I have seen more problems with corsair memory. Heck I had some pretty basic 1.5v sticks and 1 out of four was bad. Did some research and they have a pretty loose policy to memory chips that had bad sectors on them.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

The thing is anymore then 1.5v can kill the MPC, that is the CPU's Memory Controller, in an Intel Processor.

My understanding of it for our Z68 boards: The Intel limit was 1.57V. I think it's probably more important to look at the <= 0.5V gap required between DIMM voltage and VCCIO. And, I could be mistaken, but I thought the biggest risk to the IMC was VCCIO above 1.2 or 1.3. I think early in the game, some "guides" were suggesting 1.3V as an extreme upper limit, but the best prevailing advice was 1.2V.

VCCIO voltage had myths about stability -- some suggesting that it "may need to be higher." I eventually found advice to the contrary, or that there was a "range" of voltages not far above the "auto" setting where stability might vary. I think I'd set my VCCIO as high as 1.13+V for a while, but now it's about ~1.09V. The default "auto" seemed to show something around 0.98 to 0.99+V.

 

[Meghan54]

Any new haswell CPU/motherboard runs on 1.35V RAM, anything higher might work, but it will fry the motherboard with time

From what I've read on Intel's boards, I think you'll find that notion is incorrect. Actually, from what I've read, the Haswell memory controller is actually much more robust than that found in the SB/IVB cpus and can tolerate up to 1.65V without problems.

 

[Z15CAM]

Guess we are discussing OC'g - I was fortunate to buy 4 x's 4 GB sticks of Samsung MV-3V4G3D-US_DDR3 that can run at 1800Mhz 9-9-9-24-1T @ 1.35v when they were available for $96 and have no issues - I'm a Lucky Puppy ;o)

 

[bryanl]

The main problem with memory advertised for 1.65V is that it failed binning at the standard 1.50V, which isn't to say 1.50V memory is always high quality since DIMM manufacturers regularly exceed the far more stringent and sophisticated binning done by Samsung, Micron, etc.

 

[DigDog]

Corsair's sticks should be simply RMA'd, they have top notch customer support and OP will have his ram in a few days.