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#1
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SDRAM choice
In the past I've had no problem picking RAM according to motherboard
specifications and had no trouble, but this time the more I investigate, the less comfortable I become. I have a GA-H97-D3H motherboard (not overclocked) and need 16 Gb (4x4) DDR3 SDRAM, preferably by G. Skill. The Gigabyte website recommends RAM that I can't find, and a web search did not help. Your advice appreciated. Haines Brown |
#2
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SDRAM choice
Haines Brown wrote:
In the past I've had no problem picking RAM according to motherboard specifications and had no trouble, but this time the more I investigate, the less comfortable I become. I have a GA-H97-D3H motherboard (not overclocked) and need 16 Gb (4x4) DDR3 SDRAM, preferably by G. Skill. The Gigabyte website recommends RAM that I can't find, and a web search did not help. Your advice appreciated. Haines Brown http://www.gskill.com/en/configurator GA-H97-D3H (Table seems to stop at DDR3-1600...) http://www.gskill.com/en/configurato...147&model=2200 Example: [RipjawsX] F3-12800CL9Q-16GBXL DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) 16GB (4GBx4) CL9-9-9-24 1.50 Volt $170 and still in stock http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231429 The manual for the motherboard says: http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList...h97)-d3h_e.pdf "Support for DDR3 1600/1333 MHz memory modules" If I go to ark.intel.com and select a 4790K processor, it lists Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 32 GB Memory Types DDR3-1333/1600 So the motherboard appears to stick with the Intel recommendation, rather than going crazy with overclocks. The XMP profile scheme can cover more than one RAM configuration, but typically what seems to happen, is a two-DIMM setup the XMP will work, whereas if you use four DIMMs, you have to set it up yourself. I think I've seen some mention of some set of sticks having a four DIMM XMP entry in the SPD table, but it probably isn't all that common. In this case, since the memory stays at stock voltage anyway (1.5V, rather than 1.65V needed for the faster stuff), it's probably not that big a deal whether XMP works or not. I have RAM here, that the XMP sets it to 1.65V automatically, the Intel recommended "max" for Vdimm. ******* Your motherboard choice is a $93 motherboard. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128712 The dimensions 12.0" x 8.4" help indicate the class. The more expensive a board, the wider it is. When they get down to 12.0" x 7" or so, they're really cheap (probably two DIMM slots). So if you didn't have pricing information, the dimensions can give a hint where it is positioned in terms of market tier. So your board is a "no fooling around", "let's get this computer running" kind of board. When the board gets too narrow, there is no mechanical support on the right hand edge (as the mounting holes are missing on that edge). Your board has an extensive CPU support chart, and I don't see any immediate danger signs there. http://www.gigabyte.com/support-down....aspx?pid=4962 Notice the processor at the top of the chart requires BIOS version B4. The board appears to have four phase power, but since Haswell is a two-stage powering scheme, not as much current flows in the first stage as on other motherboards. The onboard regulator does 12V to 2.4V regulation (and I've seen two different figures now for that voltage and don't have a good reference on the subject). The Haswell has FIVR, a thin film switching regulator system inside the processor, that makes the ~1.0V for the CPU die. The advantage of FIVR, is the power can be more steady in there (shorter distance from regulator to distribution plane). The disadvantage is any heat created by that regulator, adds to the thermal load of the processor (part of the TDP). A recent announcement suggests Intel is phasing out FIVR on the next generation processor. And there was no indication of why the change of heart. The scheme was extensively tested, so it's not that it doesn't work. Maybe as processor power levels drop in the future, FIVR is overkill, and an external regulator is again "good enough" for Intel :-) Paul |
#3
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SDRAM choice
Paul writes:
Haines Brown wrote: In the past I've had no problem picking RAM according to motherboard specifications and had no trouble, but this time the more I investigate, the less comfortable I become. http://www.gskill.com/en/configurator Thank you for your very informative post. It didn't occur to me to visit Skill to see what they might recommend for my motherboard. I see they offers a wide selection. My intuition is that the RipjawsZ is intended for overclocking. The Sniper SDRAM is much shorter and it is not clear how they can recommend it for the motherboard. Am I correct to assume that the DDR3-1600s are faster than the DDR3-1333s? I gather that the timing 9-9-9-24 and voltage will probably have to be defined in Gigabyte's BIOS. If I go to ark.intel.com and select a 4790K processor, it lists Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 32 GB Memory Types DDR3-1333/1600 So the motherboard appears to stick with the Intel recommendation, rather than going crazy with overclocks. Your board has an extensive CPU support chart, and I don't see any immediate danger signs there. http://www.gigabyte.com/support-down....aspx?pid=4962 Notice the processor at the top of the chart requires BIOS version B4. Yes, the 4790K is my CPU, which requires BIOS version F4. Is the implication that the Intel H97 - GA-H97-D3H (rev. 1.0) has it, or will I have to start by flashing my BIOS? :-( The Haswell has FIVR, a thin film switching regulator system inside the processor, that makes the ~1.0V for the CPU die. The advantage of FIVR, is the power can be more steady in there (shorter distance from regulator to distribution plane). The disadvantage is any heat created by that regulator, adds to the thermal load of the processor (part of the TDP). Yes, I anticipated heat and bought a good after market cooler. Haines |
#4
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SDRAM choice
Haines Brown wrote:
Paul writes: Haines Brown wrote: In the past I've had no problem picking RAM according to motherboard specifications and had no trouble, but this time the more I investigate, the less comfortable I become. http://www.gskill.com/en/configurator Thank you for your very informative post. It didn't occur to me to visit Skill to see what they might recommend for my motherboard. I see they offers a wide selection. My intuition is that the RipjawsZ is intended for overclocking. The Sniper SDRAM is much shorter and it is not clear how they can recommend it for the motherboard. Am I correct to assume that the DDR3-1600s are faster than the DDR3-1333s? I gather that the timing 9-9-9-24 and voltage will probably have to be defined in Gigabyte's BIOS. The dimensions in terms of the length of the modules, they should all be the same length and pin count. The height is tricky. Chips are available as TSSOP or fine pitch BGA, and the BGA ones make short modules possible. Some of the Kingston I've bought in the past, were "low profile" and didn't have heatsinks. Those hurt your fingers to insert, as the bevel on the connector is too blunt and means extra insertion force. But, the low profile modules are not very tall, and will fit under more different heatsinks. Modules are made taller by various heatsinks. Sometimes the heatsinks are so tall, they conflict with the CPU heatsink. On my latest build, I used a cooler with "extreme headroom" and I can remove the DIMMs while the heatsink stays in place. The RAM I bought, the "crown" of the DIMM can be unscrewed, and it still has a lower section of cooler over the RAM. But the CPU heatsink was tall enough, to clear the modules fully assembled. One mistake I made in purchasing, is I didn't notice the DIMM slots were "one-latch" variety. Good slots have ejectors on both ends of the socket. My sockets only have an ejector on the end of the socket furthest away from the slot 1 video card. And that makes the RAM hard to remove. At one time, the slots were color coded (end of slot same color as body of slot), to point out there is no ejector. But this board used camouflage, painting on fake colors to make it look like a latch was present. And that caught me and I didn't notice. I can live with it, but I'm not happy about it. DIMMs nave transfer speed, and they have latency. The 1600 is faster than the 1300, as there are more "megabytes/sec". If you were doing block memory transfers, the speed might help. The latency, is proportional to the inverse of the clock period (a measure of the 1600), as well as the CAS number (9). The 1600 DIMM has tinier-sized CAS staps. So CAS9 at 1600 is a shorter period of time than CAS9 at 1333. In some articles I've read, the authors of the articles tried to downplay CAS and look at speed instead. They presented benchmark data, in a 2D table of latency and speed, and the speed buys you a bit more. Their recommendation is not to spend an infinite amount of money trying to get low-latency RAM. It might actually be hard to find low-latency chips, so you couldn't buy a really low value anyway. And the processor itself has a limit as to how low the CAS setting can go. I've had one hardware setup, where hardware other than the DIMM, prevented the lowest possible CAS to be used. If I go to ark.intel.com and select a 4790K processor, it lists Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 32 GB Memory Types DDR3-1333/1600 So the motherboard appears to stick with the Intel recommendation, rather than going crazy with overclocks. Your board has an extensive CPU support chart, and I don't see any immediate danger signs there. http://www.gigabyte.com/support-down....aspx?pid=4962 Notice the processor at the top of the chart requires BIOS version B4. Yes, the 4790K is my CPU, which requires BIOS version F4. Is the implication that the Intel H97 - GA-H97-D3H (rev. 1.0) has it, or will I have to start by flashing my BIOS? :-( Once you're aware of the issue, you try to buy from a vendor with lots of hardware turnover. My LGA775 board, the vendor still had stock from the first container from China, a year and a half after introduction. That would be an example of a "stale" source of motherboards. If there were B3 and B4 boards, I could be assured that source would sell me a B3 and I'd be stuck. I'd need to borrow a CPU from somewhere, to flash it up. My new Asus board, has one USB connector with a white ring around it, and that USB port is the "flasher" port. You can connect a USB key with a BIOS file on it, and the motherboard can flash itself without a processor. It means there is a standalone chip of some sort, which works the magic of flashing the serial EEPROM for you. And that avoids the problem of "what do I do if I get a B3 board". So Asus has a solution to that. I hope the chip is available so others can add the capability to theirs. As it eliminates the problem. snip Paul |
#5
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SDRAM choice
Paul writes:
Haines Brown wrote: Paul writes: The dimensions in terms of the length of the modules, they should all be the same length and pin count. The height is tricky. Yes, they should be the same length I would think. As you point out, height is the tricky part, for the SDRAM can't be all owed to interfere with the CPU cooler. I took that into account, and I if needed I can switch the fan to make it a pull fan on the other side of the Cool Master Hype 212 EVO cooler. Notice the processor at the top of the chart requires BIOS version B4. Yes, the 4790K is my CPU, which requires BIOS version F4. Is the implication that the Intel H97 - GA-H97-D3H (rev. 1.0) has it, or will I have to start by flashing my BIOS? :-( Once you're aware of the issue, you try to buy from a vendor with lots of hardware turnover. I purchased the MB from Newegg several weeks ago. You seem to imply that if a vendor has high turnover, it is more likely to provide the Gigabyte board with the updated BIOS. Other than asking the vendor directly, how would one know what BIOS version a Gigabyte board has? My MB has dual BIOS; does that have anything do do with version 4? Haines |
#6
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SDRAM choice
Haines Brown wrote:
I purchased the MB from Newegg several weeks ago. You seem to imply that if a vendor has high turnover, it is more likely to provide the Gigabyte board with the updated BIOS. Other than asking the vendor directly, how would one know what BIOS version a Gigabyte board has? My MB has dual BIOS; does that have anything do do with version 4? Haines Dual BIOS is a form of protection against flashing accidents. If you flash one chip, and the flash operation fails, the theory goes that you can switch to the other chip and recover. Once you trusted the new flashed BIOS, you could flash a second time, overwrite the second chip, and have both running the same version. It's possible the setup looks like this. Chip #1 Chip #2 Boot block --- Main code Main code The Gigabyte scheme may still be relying on just one boot block. And the redundancy is coverage for the main code block. It still leaves an exposure of brickage of the boot block. Gigabyte is free to change their scheme at any time and make it fully symmetric. We had a scheme like that at work, only ours was fully duplicated, not exactly a BIOS, and you could switch sides based on failure to boot. It was used for software upgrade. Both of our chips had the same content layout. And hardware decided which chip to run. If booting from #1 failed and the hardware rebooted, it could use #2 automatically, with no front panel intervention. I'm sure the scheme had just as many exposures as the Gigabyte scheme. Part of our testing, was "hammer" testing, where the equipment would lose power in the middle of a software upgrade, to prove the equipment would boot from the remaining good side. ******* At one time, the BIOS version was indicated by adhesive label on the flash chip. The flash chip is too small for that now. The chip is an eight pin DIP, rather than being the larger square chip in the removable socket they used to use. The chip is also soldered into place, more than it should be. Some boards, a few years ago, they had a seven pin serial flash header, but the programmer for that costs around $150, so nobody is going to have one of those for repair work (the manufacturer probably wouldn't provide support long enough to make owning one pay off). ******* If I check the Newegg reviews... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128712 "JK I. 6/22/2014 9:41:07 AM One note: I don't know what BIOS version is shipping on the boards now, but the newest BIOS is F4, 6/4/2014. Mine shipped with F3 and I updated immediately." And that was for a 4790 processor, which runs on F3 anyway. The only other thing I can suggest, is find a Gigabyte motherboard similar to the one you got, with the same BIOS release scheme (F3 and F4) and see if there is any evidence the board will run with F3 with that processor. There aren't enough reviews on Newegg to do a good job of figuring it out. Paul |
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