Ram Voltage

In the BIOS the ram voltage is set to 1.2v by default, i do not know however if that is the optimal voltage for it.

What will happen if i increase just the voltage to more than 1.2?

I have the AW 17 R3 with Dell's RAM (2*8gb).

 

I'd leave it be if you're not OC'ing your RAM. Raising the voltage would only introduce more heat...

OC'ing RAM in general brings about minimal gains if at all. There are great articles regarding this from reputable tech sites.

Powered by: Quad Core Exynos + 6820HK

 

i don't wanna OC the ram, i just want to make sure it's running at the right specs, cuz i'm having weird graphical issues and i pretty much eliminated all software possibilities and most hardware posibilities, all that's left now to investigate is the RAM, Hard Drive, Power Button board, wireless card, and power adapter port.

So if increasing the voltage without OCing won't harm the RAM sticks, how high of a voltage is safe??

 

You're using the 240W power adapter yes?

I would think the RAM would be at the bottom of the list of the possibilities. Even if it was the RAM, it would likely be a faulty RAM stick over RAM power issues.

 

yes the 240w power adapter.

I tried both ram sticks independently and both did the same, i am not even sure it's the RAM, but i had the motherboard replaced (and consequently the CPU and GPU with it), and the problem is still the same, i've been trying to find the cause for over a month of constant troubleshooting and research to no avail.

 

What type of graphical issues are you having?

 

well, on detailed surfaces (pretty much anything that isn't a one piece flat geometrical object) aliasing started to appear, wires became a series of disconnected short lines, and some objects even started to develop this escalator or magnetic field effect when the camera moves, i thought it was my settings at first, but no matter how high i set my settings in any game the aliasing is still there, even activating 8x sparse grid supersampling in nvidia inspector does nothing, and i could swear that every time i start up the laptop it gets that tiny bit worse (which added up over the course of 3 months), furthermore some objects show glimmering white dots where there is supposed to be none (like someone threw glitter at the object, particularly noticable on character models in MMOs where armor has so much detail, and also on the edges of geometry where it connects with another geometry).

This is not restricted to 3d applications, this affects fonts, windows icons, videos (albeit to a less extent).

i have literally tried every single software solution you might think of, and to cement this not being a software issue i reinstalled windows and all drivers (the ones from dell's support site) as well as update my BIOS to the latest.

I would upload a video but i only have a 1Mb/s upload speed.

edit: This also affects the Alienware Logo seen during POST, so there's more evidence to this being a hardware thing.

edit 2: this is also visible on shadows, some projected lights flickering rather than being at a constant degree of luminance

edit 3: on many other occasions pictures (particularly drawn ones, i.e not taken using a camera) and fonts show the outlines having this botched black/gray/white effect, like someone rubbed their finger around it and pixelated it.

 

Interesting....hmmm....

Perhaps check all your cable connections inside the laptop? That's the only thing that I can think of before ruling out the issue as having defective hardware.

When cables are not properly seated or connected properly, it can cause these weird issues that you've described. The display cable that connects to the motherboard is very tricky...it's stubborn...might want to check that.

 

except that i tried 2 external monitors and they both show the same issue.
and the mobo's been replaced like 4 days ago, so that's the display cable seated, furthermore, everything was fine when i first got the laptop, and i use it as a desktop replacement so it's not been moved around a lot or shaken to loosen anything up, yet the problem still emerged.

I should mention that this also happened on my m17 r4, but it happened after one and a half years of usage, and it developed to a much lesser extent than my current alienware, and it stopped at a certain point unlike my current alienware.

 

back to the original question though, how high of an overvoltage is safe for the ram??

 

Why would you run extra voltage through your RAM? The stock sticks are 1.2v and that is what they are set to in the BIOS and is completely stable. In fact, I have mine running at 2400MHz at 1.2v and they are rock solid.

There is someone here (can't remember who) who has killed several sticks of RAM with overclocking and extra voltage. For the additional risk of killing your sticks for next to no performance and possible instability, it's just not worth it....