Is my MB damaged ? Or is is it my RAM?

[bitmonx]

Well, I have run my P5N-D with an E8400 at 3.6GHz for a year without any issues. A few weeks ago I had all of a sudden BSOD's and CoD5 looked up while playing. Then one day I was unable to boot, I could not even get into the BIOS. I had to clear CMOS and then I was able to get into the BIOS and load the default settings.
The settings I had when OCing was;
AI Tuning =Manual
System Clock=100
VCore=1.31875
DRAM=2.21
HT=1.52
NB=1.54
SB=1.52
FSB & Mem= Unlinked
FSB=1600
Mem=800
Chipset Mem Timing=4-4-4-12-2T

Someone told me "The bus system is probably damaged from the 0.1v overvolt. Lower the NB/HT".
I have now lowered the HT and NB volts to 1.4 and the SB volt to 1.5, with these new voltage settings I can run Prime95 or Orthos for hours without any problems but Memtest is giving me an error within seconds.
Windows also told me that the most probable cause is an issue with the RAM.

Even with a slight OC the memtest is failing very quickly.
If I run everything with default settings (no OC) the memtest has passed for 3 hours (I stopped the test, no errors).

All I want is to have my PC running again at 3.6GHz. I don't want to go higher because it gets much trickier to achieve a higher OC. I have only limited knowledge about OC ing.

I have not experimented much with the mem timings because I know very little about that. I did change the timings to 5-5-5-18-2T and 6-6-6-15-2T with no better result. I also have lowered the multiplier to 8.5 and 8 as well as lowered the mem speed to 700 and also did lower the DRAM voltage with no effect. As I lowered the mem speed to 750 and below, memtest took a little longer to give me an error but still it was quite early at 7% completed and before the error came at 1.7%.....

So, what should I do. Is my RAM still good or is my MB damaged from over voltage?

Thanks for help,

Cheers,

 

[hundredislandsboy]

We have something in common in that I also have the e8400 on my P5N-D. I never went over 1.4 on the NB even when I've had it up to 4 GHz ( 8 X 500 FSB).
Try to test the RAM one stick at a time and of you have another system, you can test them on that.
I wouldn't mess with the timings, just leave timings on auto until you isolate the problem, whether it's the RAM or motherboard giving you the BSODs.

My hunch is that the RAM got cooked since you've had them set at 2.21. volts for a year. What brand and model were they? Most (about 95%) DDR2 800 SDRAM I know run below 2.1 volts unless you've got Patriot Extreme or the Corsair Dominator Cas latency 3.

 

[bitmonx]

I guess telling what I have in my system will help!

Asus P5N-D with C2 Duo E8400
2 x 1GB (Matched set) Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC6400
2 x Seagate Barracuda SATA2 500GB
1x LG DVD-RW DL
Enermax 485W PSU

So, should I try to test each stick of RAM independent with or without OC?

As said before, without OC the mem test runs fine for hours until I terminate the test.

Another question: I got Vista 32 bit. If I install 4GB of RAM the OS will only use 3-3.5GB. Asus recommends to have less than 3GB of RAM installed if the OS is 32 bit. Is that correct? Is 2GB better than 4GB in a 32 bit OS? That seems strange.......

In case I do need new RAM, what do you recommend? Does my MB support PC8500?

Cheers,

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[bitmonx]

Guess what, I just did set the DRAm Voltage to Auto and also set all the timings to Auto and memtest passed to 200%!

Cool, I guess my MB is still functioning as it should. I would like to get more RAM though.

Any suggestions?

Cheers