Ram timings ruined motherboard?

slabbed11

I recently purchased 4 Corsair DDR2 PC6400 XMS2 2 gb modules. Installed them no problem and system booted up (windows 7 ultimate 64) and recognized 8 gb memory. However, within 10min the system froze.

So i went online and did some research about ram timmings, my default settings were 5-5-5-18, which are the manufacturer settings. I found several people who said that the 4-4-4-12 settings were better so I switched it. System booted up and ran fine for about 10min then froze again.

Once i again I went back into the BIOS and switched it back to the 5-5-5-18 setting. System booted up and ran for 10 min, froze, then on restart nothing happened. The system turns on (fans spin up, dvd drive blinks) but theres no screen. My monitor doesnt even recieve a signal). The board doesn't emit any beeps or anything. Went back and put in the old ram I had and still nothing.

What happened? Is the board and/or ram toast? How could this be if even after replacing the old ram i get the same result?

system details:

windows 7 64 ultimate
abit an-m2 board, amd am2 dual core 2.1ghz
(4x2) 8 gb corsair pc6400 ddr2 800mhz

thanks alot

Serp

Have you tried reseting the BIOS? Pull out the battery for a few minutes then put it back in and see if it'll boot.

slabbed11

pulled out and replaced battery, still nothing.

thanks for the suggestion though

Thrax

It's not enough to pull the battery. You also have to set the CMOS reset jumper to clear and wait a few minutes.

slabbed11

thanks thrax, i googled cmos jumper and learned that you have to move the jumper over one spot and turn the computer on for 30 seconds. also learned that when you remove the battery that you have to turn the computer on for 30 seconds (i didnt turn it on before).

anyhow one of these methods did the trick and i was able to boot up. windows recognized 8gb, but i turned it off immediatley. currently running memtest 86 to be sure that nothing is messed up.

i also looked at the voltage for the ram in the bios, it was set to 1.85v but the memory is only rated at 1.8v. i decided to move the bios down to 1.75v, can you damage the ram by running it at a slightly lower voltage (.05v difference)?

Serp

It's shouldn't hurt your memory to run at lower voltage but it's usually best to run the memory at the voltage it's rated for.