Prime95 error with stock DDR2 voltage

[IBMThinkPadX61s]

I upgraded to a new motherboard and had default settings for everything while I installed Win7 x64. It installed fine but when I went on to install my programs, I installed a lot at once and ended up getting a few BSODs in the process.

I ran Prime95 and I would get a rounding error within 10 minutes each time (0.5 instead of 0.4 or something). I discovered that I had to increase the DDR2 voltage from its 1.8v stock voltage up to 1.9v to get it to stabilize.

Since I installed Win7 and programs with the 1.8v and got a few BSODs in the process, would I need to re-install the OS? Is there anyway to check if anything had been corrupted? As far as I can tell, everything is working fine now after the voltage increase.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

No, I think that if it doesn't show any symptoms that you won't be able to tell if anything took a hit.

What you're really worried about here is if it BSODed in the middle of doing something and some file somewhere took a hit. Really the only thing you can do in that case is run a chkdisc and see if it can find anything. Did it fail in the middle of installing stuff? I would expect there to be a problem with that, but other than that no. And if you do run into something the windows easy transfer wizard is pretty good.

Since you seem to not be having any problems it probably doesn't matter, but you could go ahead and do it if you wanted to be absolutely sure.

 

[IBMThinkPadX61s]

Thanks for the replies. I read the reviews for my motherboard and it looks like it's a common problem for people to have to manually set (and sometimes increase) the DDR2 voltage to get the system to be stable.

The motherboard is an Asus M2A-VM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16813131172) and the RAM is cheap A-Data RAM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211062).

I haven't noticed anything strange with my OS so far so I guess I am going to stick with it.

 

[IBMThinkPadX61s]

I ran memtest86 and it didn't detect any problems. I think it's a common problem with this particular board because when I filter the reviews on Newegg for the word "voltage," I see some people mention that they did the same thing. Would I shorten my RAM's life if I run it at an increased 0.1V with no overclock?

 

[Slim Shady]

up the voltage on the north bridge and south bridge a little and see if that helps. all that said was something needs more voltage to work as it should.

 

[capt_taco]

0.1V more won't hurt the RAM at all. It's pretty common for people to have to add 0.05-0.1V over the recommended specs to stabilize the system when they have all four slots filled.

How many sticks of RAM are you using, by the way? If it's all four, that could be your problem right there. Some motherboards are better at compensating for that than others.

Even if you're only using two sticks, setting the RAM timing and voltage manually isn't a bad idea. Some boards just aren't very good when set to "auto." Though I agree that if you've only got two sticks and you're trying to set it to 1.8V manually, it's pretty weird that you'd need to add more juice than that just to get it stable.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

It's possible that it's borderline defective, and the extra .1v makes it function as expected.

 

[IBMThinkPadX61s]

Best answer selected by IBMThinkPadX61s.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey