Hi All,
I am having a bit of a nightmare with my shiney new 12700K and DDR5 build as I just can't find any stability. My components are listed in my profile, but I am pretty sure my issues centers around stability of my DDR5.
Reading this forum has helped a lot, but I'm not able to run any games yet.
I got my RAM last week and after assembling everything on the weekend I proceeded to upgrade to the latest BIOS (v803) first thing and then install Windows 11. Windows install was a mess of crashes and instability which I initially put down to immature OS and lack of drivers. After updating all the drivers I was still seeing horrible instability so ran Memtest from the BIOS and found it constantly crashed after a few seconds and reporting errors. No matter what RAM config I used (XMP1, XMP2, Auto defaults or manually setting Ram frequency Memtest would crash. I tried with 4800Mhz, 4000Mhz and the 6000Mhz my RAM is rated for by GSkill.
After reading up on here I realised lots of people were having issues with memory stability and the latest BIOS was a factor for some people. I decided to downgrade the BIOS to v 702 and found Memtest passes consistently on XMP1 6000Mhz and other settings (4800Mhz etc). I have also reinstalled Windows 11 completely as I didn't trust the install given the really unstable DDR5 I seemed to have with v803 BIOS. I am however still suffering instability when in the new Windows install. I'm using 3DMark Timespy as a basic measure of stability but finding the PC rebooting, or the GPU tests randomly failing. Note, I'm using my old 1080Ti for this testing while keeping my 3090 in my old machine so I can still play games etc.
Best success I've had is with the XMP1 setting for 6000Mhz and manually increasing the VDD and VDDQ to 1.325 volts, where Timespy completed successfully a couple of times but also getting nvidia driver crashes other times. I've read Peter Tan's overclocking guide from the forum sticky thread and used it to guide me in trying to tweek some of the memory voltage settings with no real joy as yet. If I try 1.35 volts for both VDD and VDDQ it seems more unstable. If I try adding a little Volts to System Agent it is also more unstable. I've tried running 4800Mhz with auto settings in the BIOS and manually setting 1.125 volts on VDD and VDDQ but again it is more unstable, although Memtest is passing.
I'm considering swapping over my GPU to see if I get the same instability with the XMP1 6000Mhz and 1.325 volts on VDD and VDDQ but I'm pretty confident my 1080Ti is still good and not the cause. Also considering trying the v803 BIOS again but with manually setting the 1.325 volts on VQQ and VDDQ, but not convinced that will be any good given the terrible Memtest results I was getting with that BIOS version.
Any suggestion to help get this sorted would be greatly appreciated.
I'm also wondering what setting in the BIOS the TXVDDQ setting mentioned on page 10 of the overclocking guide relates to in the STRIX 690-E Gaming Wifi BIOS setting as I could find a match for it anywhere?
Thanks