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increase ram limit for nForce 790i

Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 5:54 am
by SJ88
I am in need of some help or advise on bios editing for my asus striker II extreme (nForce 790i ultra - non-reference)

All sources for this specific motherboard state that the ram limit is 8GB, however there was reports stating that the EVGA version of the nForce 790i ultra (reference board) was able to get 16GB of ram working.

So flashing the asus motherboard to the EVGA bios I was able to get 16GB of ram working on the asus striker II extreme. - so this confirms that this is not a hard ware limit and is in fact limited by the bios.

However due to the non-reference state of the asus board several issues occurred including no onboard audio, forcing me to run the GPU in PCIE 2.0 X16 slot 1 (which means covering a PICE 2.0 X1 slot used for sata port extension card) and most of the bios features being removed along with most sensors not reporting their readings such as heat and voltage etc.

With the above in mind I am almost positive that the asus bios can be edited to work with 16GB of ram - however I have no experience with bios editing (yet) I would presume it is a 'relatively' simple fix however I have no idea where to start, I am currently hard pressed for time and while searching for more specific terms of editing bios's for DRAM memory limit or similar I have not found anything - there are 101 tutorials around the internet for non-specific bios editing, so I can learn how to do some editing but hoping that someone may be able to point me in the area that would contain this information within the bios (a complete article on this area would be fantastic) - this way I could potentially compare the asus and evga bios to extrapolate the needed code/patch.

Further to this it would be extremely helpful if someone with experience could do this for me instead, however I fear the chances for this are slim as I really don't expect people to spend that much time on a problem that is fairly unique (thus the request for information first) but I could chuck a few £/$ (via paypal) for a successfully working bios edit.

Re: increase ram limit for nForce 790i

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 9:59 pm
by edwin
This is the only nForce 790i Ultra board by EVGA:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813188025

It has a 8GB memory limit. It seems some people got it to work with 4x 4GB sticks after first using 2 sticks and up the voltage from 1.5V to 1.65V then add the other 2. But that was on that EVGA board. I think the definitive answer is it can be done but you have no 100% chance on a working system which is why both Asus and EVGA did limit the board to 8GB.

you can try esupport, it will cost about $60 I think, didn't check recent prices though.

Re: increase ram limit for nForce 790i

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 11:17 pm
by SJ88
Thanks for the info, however I used my computer with the evga bios for a week and 16BG of the kingston hyperx ram with no issues, further to this the evga 790i was also originally limited to 8 GB however a bios update to V9 actually raised the limit to at least 16GB. (there was reports that V10 took it back down again but this is unconfirmed) the V9 evga bios is what I flashed the asus board to.

during the week of use, the only thing I had problems was with the sound and sensors, windows loaded fine, even ran prime95 and memtest amongst other tests with no errors.

You are correct that they are using 4x4 GB sticks, the motherboard was rated to use 1.8v DDR3 ram, however I have some XMP ram that runs at 1.65V if needed, however was running fine at an underclocked rate from 1600 to 1333 at 1.5v (for best stability and to take the stress of the NB controller along with match the CPU FSB) to that end, I am running 2 of the sticks with the asus bios (2x4) at the 1.5v with again no issues even at their standard rate and an OC'd CPU (again to match the CPU FSB of the 1600mhz ram)

So I can confirm it does work (other people also with the evga boards report no issues that I can find of running 16GB ram with the bios update) weather it shortens the life of the motherboard is yet to be seen, but at this point the board itself is fairly old (while still keeping up with everything I have thrown at it) and shortening it's life span isn't too much of a concern to me at this point. (looking to build a new one in the next 6-12 months)

I suspect the reason they limited though, was most likely because when the board was made, there was no 4GB single sticks so they had no way to confirm compatibility and by the point 4GB sticks did become available they where 1.5v rated that the board did not officially support and probably didn't see the point in doing further tests on an already (aprox) 5 year old motherboard at that point.

So while 16GB may not work on all the 790i boards (it may only be specific sets of ram), it does with mine and thus asking for some help with the bios editing because I am almost certain that the bios can be altered to raise the limit to 16GB but as my first post stated I have little experience with bios modding.

Re: increase ram limit for nForce 790i

Posted: Mon May 05, 2014 1:13 am
by Teknoman
Hello SJ88,

Have you found a solution to a working version of a modded bios for the Asus Striker II Extreme that can and will support 16 GB of DDR3 Ram?

I'm still searching for it, if it even exists btw..

Well thnx in advance if you can help me ;-


Keep in touch!!


Teknoman

Re: increase ram limit for nForce 790i

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 1:32 pm
by rayman1221
If we increase the RAM limit then we have to also make the other configurations according to that. Once I have not changed the bios according to tot he ram limit, then the system was not running properly after doing that. I have also tried to make some print but the system showed Epson printer error code 031008 on the interface.