Thread: TEAM Extreem Dark DDR3 1600 CL8

Good day all



Thought I'd share an experience of mine that I went though lately

Out of interest my system specs are:

AMD Phenom II x4 955

MSI 790FX-GD70

Mushkin DDR3 1333 CL9 (old RAM)

Force3D ATi 4890



Anyway, so about 2 weeks ago I ordered TEAM Extreem Dark DDR3 1600 CL8 4GB (2x2GB) kit, had heard some good things about this lesser brand name RAM and thought I'd give it a shot as it was decent specs at rather lower price than what similar kits cost (actually read that guys were able to get CL7 timings with 1.7V, which I was rather keen to try attempt)

After being really excited with my new RAM arriving, because I could finally have a decent kit of RAM (I originally had a 2GB stick of Mushkin 1333 CL9 RAM, which I had borrowed from a friend untill I got my own). Anyway I switched my PC off, opened it up and removed my old RAM, and plugged in the new kit and switched it on, and there was nothing :/

So I thought, no worries, it's probably still running some old settings and is confused, so I reset my bios and tried again, and still nothing

I tried one stick of RAM, tried sticks in weird and strange orientation, still nothing

So I got frustrated and plugged in the old RAM, and it posted immediately with no problems, was really confused by this, so I tried the new kit again, but nothing, I even tried mix matching the RAM in hope that the mobo would see the old RAM and post with its setting, but it was a no go

I finally tried using the old RAM to get into bios and set all my RAM settings to the lowest DRAM:FSB ratio, 1:2 (800MHz), saved settings and plugged the new RAM in, and to my amazement the PC posted, and ran 100% stable, even overclocked my system to 3.6GHz (This is my normal OC), this cause a RAM speed of 900MHz, this also ran fine, was even able to push the RAM to 1000MHz with the FSB OC, but wasn't worth keeping as its abit taxing on other parts of my system, but it still posted fine

But soon as I increased my DRAM ratio to anything above 1:2, even at stock speeds, the PC would not post

I tried like everything, voltage increases, forced timings, nothing worked, even post this problem on a few forums, and tried everything they guys could through at me, but nothing



Anyway, I got hold of Take2 and told them me dilemma, and they put me in contact with Jude from Foxcomp (which is the supplier of TEAM RAM), he was really helpful and friendly, but he too was unable to resolve this problem over the phone or email, after struggling for a few days, we finally decided that the best thing to do was to send it to there offices in Johannesburg

So, on Monday I braved up and shipped my mobo, CPU and the new RAM to Foxcomp

Well the outcome was both good and bad, bad in that Jude couldn't get the RAM to work in my system either, but good because Jude managed to organize me a replacement kit, for no extra charge

Not only did he not charge me, but he organized me an amazing and even better kit, Mushkin 1600 CL7 4GB kit (not sure how he managed to get that right, but I'm in debt to for organizing me this awesome kit), I wasn't expecting my RAM to be replaced with a better preforming kit, let alone an even better brand

I got my PC back yesterday and I'm now a proud owner of that Mushkin 4GB kit, it's running 100% stable



On a personal note: Thanks Jude for going to these lengths to provide me with help via the phone and a crap load of emails, and also going above and beyond with organize me this amazing replacement kit, can't explain how grateful I am that you managed to do this for me and all the effort you put into testing my board, I really appreciate all the effort you put into this, and your friendly help and approach to all this



As a side note: That TEAM Extreem Dark RAM actually did work on an Intel board and 100% stable to, really weird that my board rejected the RAM like it did, but it seems to be rare to see this