PCA Forums

My old trusty rig that I built back in 2007 has an issue:

The ram that I have installed is 2GB of Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5D G on Asus P5K-E. The rated speed is 1066MHz, but I've been running it at 800MHz because Acronis would fail during a validation of the backup. Well something happened to the bios that required a reset, and now when I manually set the speed to 800MHz, the bios reports that there is an overclocking issue, but I don't have it overclocked. Everything is set at auto except for the ram. No matter what setting I select for the overclocking option (manual, auto, standard, N.O.S.) it stops booting with the warning about overclocking. It will only work when the ram is set to auto.

Since ram is cheap, I headed over to Crucial and ordered new ram for this board. I hope it works as the ram I ordered is 1066MHz using their options for this motherboard.

From what I've found, it appears that that RAM needs 2.1v to run correctly. Most motherboards default to 1.8v or somewhere around there. I bet if you bumped the voltage, your problems would be solved.

I have it set to AUTO now, and it reports 2.1v:



Something got messed up in the BIOS. Its never been updated. I'm using a BIOS version 0703. They are already up to 1305. It must be messed up because if I set the memory to 800 I get the overclock error. I then reset it back to auto, but the pc won't boot and the fan is on high speed. I have to power down and restart for it to boot.

According to the manual, it has EZ-BIOS tool, which means I can simply copy the BIOS file on a flash drive, and while the pc is booting, I hit ALT+F2 to access it. I noticed at Asus's site for this model motherboard, version 0806 added "Enhance memory compatibility".
http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?S ... rZWGgB1GuJ

Even with the old BIOS, it's odd that it would suddenly start rejecting it. Doesn't hurt to upgrade though. That is a rather old version & as you noted, it is rather painless to do. Just make sure it's stable when doing it. I'd also reset the BIOS to default after the flash & start fresh just in case somethings set weird.

Got the BIOS updated. That was great. Never had to do an update with a flash drive before. Did not require making it bootable either. It saw the new BIOS on the flash drive. Once updated and it rebooted, I set everything to default values then readjusted the ram back to 800MHz.
Acronis now validates the backups with no errors.

Good deal. You have bonus memory while you're at it.