EP45-DS3L F9 and F10 instability

[elminster13]

Hi all,
I hope someone can offer some suggestions to an issue I m having. I have an EP45-DS3L, Q8300 2.5GHZ Quad Core, 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS2 RAM, Blackgold Tuner and ATI 4550 setup.
It is a new mobo for my setup and it arrived with F8 bios, I tried the F10 one first and had loads of BSOD in both Vista and W7, I then tried F9 and VMC 7MC keep resetting, seem to be having issues with the tuner (may be a red herring).
I am now back on F8 and all is well (except S3 issues, which was meant to be fixed in F9), I'd really like to have at least F9 but can't continue with such instability.
I read a post on the forum about changing some of the advanced setting which I tried tna, anyone got any ideas?

[elminster13]

Re: EP45-DS3L F9 and F10 instability

Also I forgot to say that the first time I installed the bios i used @BIOS ( i now know this is frowned upon), I have since reflashed with QFlash and it appears stable. I also did a memtest and allowed one run which was a pass

[elminster13]

Re: EP45-DS3L F9 and F10 instability

wow, this is a really busy thread, one day later and my post is lost in the pile! Any help would be great.

[elminster13]

Re: EP45-DS3L F9 and F10 instability

I think I have improved the stability a little by fiddling with the default RAM settings on F10. The RAM I have is
Corsair DDR2 PC2-6400 CM2X1024-6400C4D
I set the standard settings to 4-4-4-12 and changed the voltage to 2.1V as per the memory mfg page. The gigabyte bios has coloured it red though which is worrying (on the right it says I can damage the RAM if I overvoltage it) as I wonder if I have given it too much voltage.
Stability is definitely better now, waiting with bated breath to see if it bombs again.
I wonder why this would happen on BIOS defaults!