This is my first post and hopefully I do it right cause I'm a noob...
Recently made a few purchases to upgrade my computer. I purchased a OCZ-Vertex 3 120GB SSD and installed Windows 7 on it for faster performance of the OS. At the same time I purchased 8GB of Kingston Hyper X memory (KHX1600C9D3K2/8x) to see if I could get more performance from my PC. How do I check / fix this?
Please forgive my Noobiness!
Well that's a p45 motherboard, assuming the cpu is in the same age bracket as the motherboard. The max that system was ever meant to have is 1333mhz, meaning 1600 would be well into overclocking on that system. ...I don't even recall if the p45 supports intel turbo boost. ..If it does you'll get automatic use of the additional ram speed when the system is under load without you needing to do anything.
...Does the motherboard support XMP ram?
Checked the BIOS and it is set to Auto but there is also Manual and XMP options. Is there a way to capture the BIOS screen for a post?
Pretty sure that board is from before they started using the UEFI bios. So a picture from a camera is the only way to show it here. you can't capture.
Honestly the easiest way to see if your ram supports xmp is to try enabling it.
I would only do this if you know how to reset your bios though, because if it doesn't support it you'll probably have trouble even booting without a reset.
edit: just checked and the bios is a standard AMI type so a camera would be the only way to share a screen from your bios.
You can run that memory fine in your system but you need to know how to overlock in order to use it effectively. Do you know how to properly OC your system? It's not just one change in the BIOS and forget about it. Regardless, if you do OC effectively, you're going to have a much more noticeable difference in adding the amount of RAM as compared to running it at a slightly higher frequency.
Here is a picture I took of my BIOS screen. I selected XMP, saved changes and my computer restarted but never came back on. Only thing was the fan was running at an increasing rate. Waited about 30 seconds but nothing happened so I powered off my machine and reset my BIOS to the AUTO setting.
Only two thoughts left at this point.
1 - it is possible you need to update your bios. I would only do so if there is a fix in there related to memory issues.
2 - the ram doesn't support xmp, (which is kind of odd for ram @1600+)
Unfortunately I have no clue what to do when it comes to overclocking and that is why I joined this forum. I have read many threads but know that each computer is different and I don't want to make a serious error. Where could I go to learn basic OC 101 if you will? What do you recommend?
I updated the BIOS yesterday I now have the newest one (BIOS 2105) directly from the ASUS site. Also I checked Kingston's website and found this PDF regarding my memory. It doesn't specifically mention XMP but I'm not really sure what I'm looking for...
KHX1600C9D3K2_8G.pdf
From the manual/specs,
Based on that if you have the two sticks in the orange slots, it should just be a matter of setting the DRAM frequency to DDR3-800 if the XMP setting won't work. You should also make sure that it is set to 1.65V, as that is what it needs to run at 1600.4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB, DDR3 1800(O.C.)/1600/1333/1066 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel memory architecture
*DDR3 1600MHz or above DIMMs work only on the Orange slots for one DIMM per channel.
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