Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
15 Posts
0
38437
Alienware Aurora R4 and Corsair Vengeance Pro 1866
Hi,
I just bought a new Aurora R4 from the Dell Outlet, and picked up this memory: http://www.corsair.com/en/memory-by-product-family/vengeance-pro-series-memory/vengeance-pro-series-32gb-4-x-8gb-ddr3-dram-1866mhz-c9-memory-kit-cmy32gx3m4a1866c9.html from elsewhere, as the system I ordered didn't have much RAM. (The memory modules I ordered are 1866MHz, which my CPU does support.)
I've had a great deal of problems getting the machine to post with all four memory sticks in. At the moment, the only way I can get it to POST is to swap out one of my new memory sticks (doesn't matter which) with one of the slow memory sticks the machine shipped with. This forces the bios to set the memory speed to 1333MHz with relaxed timings, and then it will boot. I was able to get it to boot with all four sticks by setting all of the timings to manual and copying them from the settings with a mix of the new and old sticks, but even increasing the speed to 1600MHz seems to always result in the system failing to POST.
Alienware phone support weren't particularly helpful. (In fact they were rather rude, and wasted a whole load of my time with redundant tests.) Their answer basically was "you didn't buy the RAM from us, so it's not our problem". However, given this is marketed as a machine for enthusiasts this response doesn't really seem appropriate. It's not like I'm using some no-brand memory modules, these are the mid-market modules from one of the largest memory suppliers. In the past, I've always built my own PCs, and I would be horrified if I had these problems with an off the shelf motherboard I'd bought. I expect support from Dell to be better than support from a motherboard manufacturer, not worse.
Has had anyone had similar problems? Do you have any thoughts on what might be causing the problems, and what I can do to fix them?
Thanks in advance,
Tom
Alienware-L_Por
842 Posts
0
February 20th, 2014 07:00
The memory types supported by the Aurora R4 are only 1600 MHz or 2133 MHz XMP. That could be the situation. Try switching those out for any of those 2 configs.
AAA737flyer
757 Posts
1
February 20th, 2014 08:00
cfp
15 Posts
0
February 20th, 2014 16:00
It won't boot at 1600MHz with any timings, so I don't think it's that.
cfp
15 Posts
0
February 20th, 2014 16:00
This sounds like useful advice. Thanks. I hadn't thought of setting "QPI and Uncore voltage to +200mv". (My PCs currently transferring a lot of files from my backup machine though, so I can't touch it for a while.)
If anyone else has similar problems to me, what I found to half-work was the following. Boot with 3 of the Corsair modules and 1 of the Dell originals. Go in to bios, and set the memory voltage to 1.5, the memory speed to 1333MHz (="5"), and the memory timings to manual, copying across the values it's currently on. Save, restart, then shut down and replace the Dell module with the 4th Corsair one. Hopefully, it will still boot, then go into bios, and turn off XMP (doing this was not an available option with mixed RAM). Once you've turned off XMP you can then set the speed and timings back to AUTO, and reboot. However, the AUTO speed will still select 1333MHz, though the timings will be a bit tighter at least.
I've never yet got 1600MHz to work, with any timings. Perhaps the QPI and Uncore voltage thing mentioned previously might help though.