My first computer build!

[granbystyle]

Hi all - I just built my first computer! It was a fun experience, and I even had my 9 yr old son help. I was hoping you could assist me with an issue I'm having with the memory - this seems to be the best place for answers. I bought an Asus F2A85-M motherboard because allows memory overclocking. I was told that I want the fastest memory available to help boost the speed of the amd a10-5800k APU that I installed on it. So I bought the g.skill Ares 2133mhz 4gbX2 and installed them on slots A2 and B2 on the motherboard. It shows the ram on my Asus system information having a maximum bandwidth of 800mhz. I'm not sure if that's what it is supposed to be but I'm assuming I have to reboot and go into the ai tweaker section of the bios and adjust memory frequency somehow. Is anyone here familiar with the ai tweaker on ASUS motherboards that can tell me exactly what I need to do? Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[christop]

Can you set the speed of your ram in the tweaker section.

 

[geofelt]

Ram will run at a default speed to be certain you can boot into bios.
What you are seeing, 800, is really 1600 since the ram is running in dual channel mode.
I think your motherboard will run as fast as 1866 without overclocking.

If you work at it, you should be able to run at your purchased 2133.
You probably need to set the voltage a bit higher to get that speed.

Whatever you do, run memtest86+ for a bit to exercise the ram. You should get NO errors.

 

[granbystyle]

Yes - the frequency was set at auto (1600mhz) so I changed it to the 2133mhz option. So I saved it and restarted. Now I notice windows freezes up after a while and random blue screen & restarts. Was there something else I am supposed to change as well?

 

[granbystyle]

OK, I went back into the bios and set it to 1866mhz. The DRAM voltage is set to AUTO which says that it's running at 1.65v. Primary timings are set to Auto and I don't know how I should change them, if I should. Thanks for the responses!

 

[geofelt]

1. Do download a copy of memtest86+. It is free, and will exercise your ram to verify that it works properly at whatever settings you use.
It boots from a floppy, usb, or dvd. No os required.

2. I am not so familiar with your motherboard, or amd in general. There will be a limit for ram voltage beyond which you may cause damage.
I suspect 1.65v is ok. For faster ram, you may have to loosen the timings(cas etc). that reduces some of the value of faster ram, so there is a trade off.
I think you might want to research ram overclocking on your motherboard.

3. In Intel cpu's, there is negligible difference in real app performance with faster ram. I understand that AMD depends a bit more on fast ram more. Still, I do not think that the difference in real performance is so great that I would pursue faster than 1866 very hard.

 

[granbystyle]

ok, I downloaded and burned the memtest 86+ and ran it with the frequency set at 1866. It didn't have any errors, so I think I'm going to leave it at that - since apparently I would have to manually change timings in the bios to get it to the advertised 2133mhz speed and I have no idea how to do that. Thanks again.

 

[Xttony]

What you are seeing, 800, is really 1600 since the ram is running in dual channel mode.

What will be the case in triple channel will it become 533MHz

 

[geofelt]

What will be the case in triple channel will it become 533MHz

Not exactly. The OP's motherboard supports dual channel, two slots for each channel.
That is as good as he can do.

 

[Xttony]

Not exactly. The OP's motherboard supports dual channel, two slots for each channel.
That is as good as he can do.

I was asking that for myself.