Occasionally fails to power on at 1866Mhz with Corsair Vengeance Pro 1866 on Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H
Occasionally fails to power on at 1866Mhz with Corsair Vengeance Pro 1866 on Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H
Hello Team,
Looking for similar configurations or advice:
Brief overview:
The system sometimes fails to start when RAM is set above 1333Mhz.
System Details:
- Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H ATX LGA1150 Board
- Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 RAM
- Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core CPU
- Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Power Supply
- SanDisk SSD PLUS 240 GB SATA III 2.5" SSD up to 520 MB/s
- Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM HDD
- Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer
- Akasa Interconnect Pro 5.25-Inch USB Front Panel with Card Reader
- CiT VANQUISH RED ATX Mid Tower Case
- Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
Full Build Notes:
I recently assembled this PC and everything proceeded smoothly until the final BIOS update and configuration tweaks.
Setting RAM to XMP caused the system to fail to start from 'soft off' about four times (roughly), but worked normally once it was running. After turning off the PSU for 30 seconds, it would reboot and boot properly. When it wouldn’t start, fans would spin up and HDMI output appeared but the screen remained black—no POST sound.
I’m confident I was using RAM at 1866Mhz via XMP on BIOS revision F7 without issues, yet the board refused to downgrade for testing.
Testing at 1333Mhz with the same settings worked perfectly every time.
Attempts made:
- One stick only
- Both dual channels
- Resetting BIOS and adjusting memory speed
- Downgrading to BIOS F8 (blocked), then clearing and reconfiguring
- Using XMP Profile 1
- Manual multiplier set to 18.66 (XMP off)
- Multiplier set to 16 (1600Mhz)
- Voltage adjusted to 1.54v and 1.56v
Interesting note: I discovered a bug in the Gigabyte System Information Viewer. If you allocate more than the default 64MB for graphics (tried 256MB and 512MB), the viewer will display a blue screen with Windows 10 error.
This strongly suggests a BIOS issue introduced in F8 that now blocks Vengeance RAM from operating above 1333Mhz.
Could anyone with a similar setup or BIOS version confirm this?
Thank you in advance and have a great holiday season!
Having the same issue with the same Mobo, rev 1.0, using a new 950TI, an additional 16 GB of RAM, and an SSD installed. Occasional hangs during cold boot. Disconnecting all new peripherals and enabling onboard video stabilizes booting, though reconnecting newer devices may trigger hangs and restarts. After restarting, everything works fine. I was planning to update the BIOS, which is quite outdated. I’m sure it’s related to the video card or BIOS, but I’m worried about updating now. Will let you know if anything useful comes up.
Having the same issue with the same Mobo, rev 1.0, using a new 950TI, an additional 16 GB of RAM, and an SSD installed. Occasional hangs during cold boot. Disconnecting all new peripherals and enabling onboard video stabilizes booting, though reconnecting newer devices may trigger hangs and restarts. After restarting, everything works fine. I was planning to update the BIOS, which is quite outdated. I’m sure it’s related to the video card or BIOS, but I’m worried about updating now. Will let you know if anything useful comes up.