Erm yeah confused

[Oli_The_Anarchist]

Right so I have been having a few problems with my new pc and also there is something very strange going on!

Intel i5 4690k! Cooler master Seidon 120v, Asus Z87-K, 8 GB Crucial Ballistix
1600Mhz RAM, Sapphire 7970 3gb GDDR5, 120GB Kingston SSD, 500GB Seagate
Barracuda, Corsair Carbide Spec-01,Seasonic M-12 EVO 750W NZXT Sentry 2 Fan
Controller.

Basically, the first graphics card I got had bad coil whine, so I had to get a refund on that, the second had a GPU glitch and kept crashing out on me, so then I got my current one and I have been experiencing very weird boot problems the pc will run perfectly fine, no problems when running and plays games amazing, however when booting the next day normally my lights on my keyboard won't come on so I will reset the pc and I will get BIOS loading screen and then it will just have a line in the top left hand corner of the screen and I will reset again and it will boot completely normally, my MOBO, CPU and RAM where bought second hand and were working perfectly fine before I put my most recent graphics card in, it then started developing this problem and I have basically just been dealing with it for the past few weeks however I am returning it for a refund and getting a new card and see if this solves the problem, also having a nicer newer card isn't something to complain about. But anyway I was just wondering if anyone on here has ever experienced anything similar to this? But that isn't the weirdest thing, basically, I thought, hmm I have spare stick of 4 gb memory lying around, so I will try that, it is a stick of corsair vengeance so plugged it in and tried it and had the same problem and being an engineer I though lets just see if these two work together, I plugged the second in and pressed the boot button expecting to hear the depressing beep however booted!!! bear in mind these are two different sized sticks of RAM, with different speeds and might even have different timings! running in dual channel together?! Can anyone explain this, I thought that mixing RAM very rarely worked? and will there be any effects on my system by mixing these two sticks?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Ram is always best purchased and running in identical pairs from the same retail packs.

 

[Oli_The_Anarchist]

Yeah I know that, I was just wondering why it was working, and if you have any idea about the other problem?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

It can work when mixed , but not usually recommended , because can be unstable or cause system issues , or not run at all.

 

[Oli_The_Anarchist]

Yeah that was exactly what I thought would happen with it being different size, different speed and I think different timings

 

[giantbucket]

it's possible that the mix-n-match forced the BIOS to slow down the overall memory to match the slowest stick, and that allowed all sticks to work properly. could be that the original sticks were marginal so they would have glitches at their rated speed, but work fine at reduced speeds.

 

[HEXiT]

when the ram is different sizes the mmu will switch to single channel mode.
also running differing timings can cause the mmu to stress and either over heat or break over time.

the chances are you just got lucky with your jdecs being similar so the mmu will raise or lower them and try to sync them to the slowest timings, if you mmu is set to auto.

run cpu-z and check the jedc values, then the actual speeds and channel setting. if its switched to single channel then remove the lesser stick as it will likely impact overall perfomance more than any gains of having extra ram.

 

[Oli_The_Anarchist]

well I was running single channel before as I had 1 stick of crucial 8 gb ballistix sport however adding the corsair It has switched to dual channel and the JDECs are different corsair runnign at 666 on jdec 4 and crucial running at 800 on jdec 7 bearing in mind that the corsair has a high speed rating

 

[Oli_The_Anarchist]

RAM
Memory slots
Total memory slots 4
Used memory slots 2
Free memory slots 2
Memory
Type DDR3
Size 12288 MBytes
Channels # Dual
DRAM Frequency 666.1 MHz
CAS# Latency (CL) 9 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD) 9 clocks
RAS# Precharge (tRP) 9 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS) 24 clocks
Command Rate (CR) 1T
Physical Memory
Memory Usage 18 %
Total Physical 12 GB
Available Physical 9.75 GB
Total Virtual 14 GB
Available Virtual 11 GB
SPD
Number Of SPD Modules 2
Slot #1
Type DDR3
Size 4096 MBytes
Manufacturer Corsair
Max Bandwidth PC3-10700 (667 MHz)
Part Number CMY8GX3M2A1866C9
SPD Ext. XMP
Timing table
Frequency CAS# Latency RAS# To CAS# RAS# Precharge tRAS tRC Voltage
JEDEC #1 381.0 MHz 5.0 5 5 14 19 1.500 V
JEDEC #2 457.1 MHz 6.0 6 6 17 23 1.500 V
JEDEC #3 609.5 MHz 8.0 8 8 22 30 1.500 V
JEDEC #4 666.7 MHz 9.0 9 9 24 33 1.500 V
XMP-1864 932 MHz 9.0 10 9 27 1.500 V
Slot #2
Type DDR3
Size 8192 MBytes
Manufacturer Crucial Technology
Max Bandwidth PC3-12800H (800 MHz)
Part Number BLS8G3D1609DS1S00.
Serial Number A01AB98A
SPD Ext. XMP
Timing table
Frequency CAS# Latency RAS# To CAS# RAS# Precharge tRAS tRC Voltage
JEDEC #1 444.4 MHz 5.0 5 5 14 22 1.500 V
JEDEC #2 533.3 MHz 6.0 6 6 16 26 1.500 V
JEDEC #3 622.2 MHz 7.0 7 7 19 31 1.500 V
JEDEC #4 711.1 MHz 8.0 8 8 22 35 1.500 V
JEDEC #5 800.0 MHz 9.0 9 9 24 39 1.500 V
JEDEC #6 800.0 MHz 10.0 9 9 24 39 1.500 V
JEDEC #7 800.0 MHz 11.0 9 9 24 39 1.500 V
XMP-1600 800 MHz 9.0 9 9 24 1.500 V

 

[HEXiT]

yep the mmu has loosened the timings on the second stick by the looks of it...
im surprised its showing dual channel mode though...

 

[Oli_The_Anarchist]

yeah main reason why I am posting this, I am quite confused! and also am very annoyed about that fact that I have to do that everytime I boot my system, basically takes 3 attempts