Computer help needed

[Engels]

Asus hides it pretty well. If its the same bios version as my A8N32 SLI Deluxe, you want to go to Advanced>CPU configuration, then at the bottom to Memory configuration. There you'll see a bunch of stuff listed, but you won't get to the options you need until you switch one of those settings to Manual. Then it opens up all the colums you need. Further complicating matters is that they use a slightly different naming convention. Instead of CL they call it tCL. Instead of rp they call it trp, etc. The manual, of course, is woefully lacking too. Best to go out to a website and see about memory overclocking for your particular board. With any luck, some charitable soul has done a walkthough. Here's an example of Asus conventions. Just an example

CAS Latency (tCL): 2
RAS to CAS Delay (tRCD): 3
Row Precharge (tRP): 3
Active to Precharge Delay (tRAS): 6

[bhodi]

If you really want to do teaking, toms hardware has a number of good guides. Keep in mind one thing, overclcoking your CPU gets you wayyyyyyyyyyy more than dropping the memory timings, so if you're trying to overclock in the future, and for those watching, it's much better to get your system stable with a higher CPU clock speed and then tweak the memory.

[Engels]

I personally love the Asus Overclock Profile setting, where you just set it at a percentage (up to 10%) and let the board do all the fiddly bits for you. Overclocking manually is a very harried process involving potentially at least 4 variables. If you were awful at quadratic equations in highschool, you may want to stick to a simple OC profile thingibob like I do. It does the job. My 2.6 Ghz runs at 2.8 Ghz at 29 C idle, 45 C full load using CPU Stability Test. On a factory fan.

[Trippy]

Try each memory stick individually. Also check the timings that are reported in the BIOS (e.g. the "2-3-5-5" type stuff) and make sure those match up with what the memory is rated at. If you can boot from, say, a floppy without crashing trying running Memtest86+. Also that 3 GB/4 GB of system memory reported sounds wrong. Check the "fine print" on those sticks and make sure they are what you think they are.

Thanks for the quick answer.

Hm. I can't find any settings that look like 2-3-5-5 in my BIOS. What would the be called ?

I am almost convinced that I have some of the settings wrong, but I have absolutely no idea, which that could be.

It's in the Advanced Chipset Features menu on page 3-18 of your manual or thereabouts. The voltage setting for your DRAM is in the uGuru utllity menu.

[Furiously]

Look for memory timings or DRAM.

Or just run Memtest86+. It will let you know the problem. It's a wonderful thing.

[Engels]

Just a quick word on Memtest86...be sure to turn of USB legacy support in BIOS before running it, or it will fail around test 5 or 6 in some Asus motherboards.