intel P55 LGA1156 chipset and DDR3 Memory
When I first bought an Intel P55 chipset based motherboard and a LGA1156 Core i7 Processor, I thought the safest thing to do would be purchasing Standard memory from a reputable company with JEDEC approved voltage and timings.
So I purchased some standard Crucial DDR3-1333 PC3-10600.
If you go to crucial’s website and you enter in a P55 motherboard, you will get this suggested memory:
I ordered 2 4GB kits, each with with 2 2GB dimms.
The dimms all looked like this:
here is what CPUZ saw from the SPD of the dimm:
So, everything seemed fine until I started to get random reboots every couple days.
I tried every possible combination of the dimms, and I always got the same result; hard-reboots.
I felt the odds of all 4 dimms being faulty is roughly zero, so I decided it must be the motherboard, until I started reading these comments on newegg about my memory. There are/was a very high percentage of people claiming the memory did not work on their P55 motherboard.
Then I started to see newegg stamp certain memory P55 Core i5/i7 compatible, which didn’t seem to make sense, because any memory that adheres to JEDEC spec for PC3-10600 should be compatible.¿?
I found Intel’s own Validation Results for DDR3-1333 on P55 here.
It lists Crucial’s CT25664BA1339, but specifically the CT25664BA1339.16FF.
Looking closer at my memory I found it to be CT25664BA1339.M16SFD.
for reference this dimm uses micron chips with markings: 9ND22 D9JNM
Crucial said the last string of this part number is for internal use only, and refers to which chip/set is being used on the dimm. The crucial representative said it should make no difference with respect to P55 compatibility, and was perplexed why Intel would specifically approve the 16FF. In fact as a consumer you cannot even see what the internal chipset number is before you buy online, but you can call and ask to order a specific one over the phone.
I did just that, and ordered a set of CT25664BA1339.16FF over the phone from crucial, they looked like this:
Notice the Micron label on the left? I assume this means the dimm itself was manufactured by Micron, and resold by crucial.
(my other CT25664BA1339.M16SFD dimms don’t have a micron sticker.)
The CT25664BA1339.16FF dimm uses different micron chips marked: 9NF22 D9KPT
So the Crucial CT25664BA1339.16FF is in fact a Micron MT16JTF25664AZ-1G4F1 dimm.
CPU-Z’s information from the SPD agrees:
It is no surprise that both the Crucial CT25664BA1339.16FF and the Micron MT16JTF25664AZ-1G4F1 passed Intel’s validation tests, as they are the exact same dimm:
These new Micron dimms seem to run fine in my system without any problems.
I still don’t know why the P55 chipset/CPUs have problems with the non-16FF crucial dimms. So I by no means really understand the root of the issue, but I thought others might find this interesting.
The memory Crucial will send you for a P55 system may not be the memory you want.
It also seems that many DDR3 kits that seem fine otherwise, do not work right with the P55.
This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 18:48 and is filed under it. Find similar posts by selecting any of the following tags: crucial, it, memory, p55. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on 09.11.2009 at 12:58 Nobody Home wrote:
I have the SAME exact issue. I have an Intel DP55WG mainboard that uses the P55 chipset. I bought a pair of Kingston KVR1333D3/2GR’s which also is within the specs of the mainboard. (1.5v 9-9-9-24) It is not in the compatibility list. Now ever since I set up the machine I am getting random automatic restarts. No blue screen or nothing, just restarts. It is at random. Sometimes once a day, others 3-4 times a day. I don’t want to spend more money to test another stick of ram. However I ran memtest on the ram and it passes with 2 passes. It didn’t make it passed the second pass without restarting. Now I am stuck with this hardware with no solution without spending even MORE money.
on 15.11.2009 at 01:36 Matt wrote:
I just ordered the crucial kit off of newegg : CT2KIT25664BA1339 I hope it is using the proper memory to be compatible with my intel DP55WB board (micro atx p55). crossing my fingers. I will use this article and the comments on newegg as ammo if I have to start making support phone calls into getting some replacement chips sent out.
thanks for the info.
on 23.11.2009 at 14:34 fedot wrote:
Thank you very much for your detailed findings!
I wish I found your post before I ordered my non-working RAM…
I expressed my thoughts here:
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Standard-DRAM-Memory/My-new-RAM-does-not-work-at-its-rated-parameters/td-p/7375
on 19.02.2010 at 12:55 Andrea Chiavazza wrote:
I just bought 2x2GB Kingston KVR1333D3N9K2/4G for an Intel DH55TC board.
Intel had this model tested through CMTL labs. The model tested by CMTL had Hynix chips while mine has Kingston chips.
The “sub-model” name also changes from 2025403-0F1.A00 to 99U5403-003.A00LF.
I ran1pass of memtest86 OK and didn’t have any issues on this first day of use, but I can’t help thinking that major memory brands are not playing 100% clean on this whole tested/certified matter.
on 01.03.2010 at 16:27 deuce wrote:
Thanks very much for this detailed post. This is the exact issue that we had. We were shipped one working and one non-working version of the RAM for two P55 systems from NewEgg in the same shipment. One computer has been solid and the other reboots often. We swapped the RAM and it followed the non-16FF Crucial RAM. We are going to try to get Crucial to ship us the correct version since their RMA services seem to be pretty good.
Thanks again!
on 01.03.2010 at 16:45 John T wrote:
I had dealt with the same problem with random reboots and lockups for a few months with my P55 motherboard and kept looking at a software cause.
After I saw your entry a few weeks ago I looked at my memory a little closer and saw that I had both M16FF and 16SFD modules. The 16SFDs were also reporting back the same way yours were with FFFFFFFF for the serial where my M16FFs show manufacturer and part number. After taking the 16SFDs out my system became stable once more.
A call to Crucial and they repaced the 16SFDs with M16FFs and my sytem is running 8 gigs again without issues.
One thing though with the 16SFDs, I think it might be a little isolated. My brother has the same setup as I do and he was 16SFDs, but CPU-Z shows a manufacturer and part number on his. He’s had no problems with lockups or freezes.
The memory I had passed memtest86, but I think it was just a combination of things that caused memory errors to crop up randomly.
I could play a video game for hours, but then try scrolling up and down in a web browser and it would freeze.
Thanks again for helping me solve my problem.
on 18.05.2010 at 20:44 GT wrote:
Thank goodness for your posting!!! Random re-boots had been driving me crazy for months after re-building my PC using a boxed Intel DP55KG motherboard and 8 GB of Crucial memory. I started in October by pulling my old (failed) ASUS motherboard out from under Windows XP 32-bit. I soon started experiencing random re-boots (something in over a decade of PC builds that I’d never seen), but I hoped (at first) that they were due to some driver that I’d failed to remove from the old ASUS build. So when Windows 7 64-bit became available, I did a clean install to an Intel SSD (SSDSA2MH160G2R5), but the random re-boots occurred more often than ever! I had to go out of town for a couple of months, and when I got back the first boot of my PC resulted in the usual avalanche of Windows updates. From that point on, instead of getting random re-boots, I got blue-screens! Crucial Tech Support could not suggest a solution, but were willing to replace my DIMMs. At that point I discovered your posting. My 8 GB of DIMMs were indeed 16SFDs! Crucial was willing to replace them with M16FFs, though they were not aware of any problem with the 16SFD builds. I have now been running for weeks without a single problem! For what it’s worth, the 16SFDs were built in China, while the M16FFs were built in the USA. Thanks again!!!