Memory and Power Supply Compatibility Issues

Unfortunately, our first encounter with the Asus M4A78T-E mainboard was overshadowed by a number of different problems that have seriously affected our first favorable impression from it. It was later that we found out the board was not to blame for the discovered issues. However, it was not free from a number of its own drawbacks, which unfortunately surfaced later, too.

The main problem was the board refused to work stably even with default settings, without any CPU overclocking. The OS would boot, but any tests we tried running would inevitably lead to freezing and BSOD. For the preliminary tests I used the old operating system that was left from the previous LGA1366 platform tests. So, I decided to remove it and install fresh, and again, without any luck. Windows Vista installation completed successfully, but everything would freeze upon first system boot-up when the performance check is made.

Finally, it turned out that there was a compatibility issue between the board and 1024MB DDR3 OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Series modules. I had two OCZ3P18002GK kits at my disposal, so the number of DIMMs was not the issue. I tried four, two and even one and checked out all the DIMM slots. The system remained unstable or couldn’t boot Windows Vista at all; couldn’t save the BIOS settings saying that it detected a new CPU on every system restart.

At that point it was unclear who the one to blame was: Asus or OCZ? Therefore, I continued the experiments on Asus M4A78T-E with different memory modules. However, when I got to the preliminary stability tests, we put together another Socket AM3 testbed based on Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P mainboard. This solution is based on AMD 790X chipset and its review will come out shortly. At this point I would only like to say that the Gigabyte board also refused to work with DDR3 OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Series memory modules. So, does it mean that it’s all OCZ’s fault? Any maybe we should blame AMD, since their memory controller is integrated into AMD Phenom II X4 810 processor?

They say that it happens very often that mainboards are incompatible with memory some modules, video cards or other expansion cards and it doesn’t really depend on the platform type. It can happen to an Intel platform as well as to an AMD one. I personally have tested dozens of mainboards, but cannot recall any compatibility issues like that in my experience. For the first time in two years I got to testing a mainboard for AMD processors and immediately got a compatibility problem. Two different mainboards, from two different makers, based on different (though related) chipsets, one has an AMI based BIOS, while the other – a Phoenix-Award based one, and both of them do not work with the same memory modules. I still have my doubts about the guilty, but for some reason I just wanted to get back to testing Intel platforms again…

I replaced the memory modules, but it didn’t solve the problem. When I started my overclocking experiments and found what seemed to be an optimal and operational combination of frequencies and voltages, another mysterious phenomenon surfaced. The system successfully passed short stability tests with utilities creating high workload, but would fail any long-term tests lasting for an hour or more. Everything would inevitably lead to the notorious blue screen of death. And again it took me a while to determine that it wasn’t the mainboard’s fault, but the power supply’s. By pure coincidence or irony the PSU was an OCZ one, too.

I still do not say that OCZ solutions have a quality issue. However, I can and will complain that the fan inside my OCZ GameXStream OCZGXS700 PSU was so loud that I couldn’t use it in my home system and had to replace with a quieter and hence less powerful one. This modified power supply unit proved capable of working just fine in my moderately overclocked home system for a long time. Moreover, it successfully participated in our recent tests of an overclocked and hence very resource-hungry LGA1366 platform. However, the quiet but less powerful fan could no longer cope with the overheating PSU during long-term stability tests. That was the reason for the blue screens of death to pop up.