Mavericks randomly freezing? Try increasing RAM voltage... it may help!

[mpulse]

So I too have been having issues with random freezes on my newly built Hackintosh. I followed the hardware recommendations on this site along with all the recommended BIOS settings. I ensured that the RAM sticks I purchased were on the compatible list of my mobo.

Installation was a breeze but I immediately started to notice random freezes quite frequently, almost daily or every other day. So off to google I went and various boards including this one to try to find a solution and the only thing I could find was a reference to increasing your RAM voltage in BIOS from 1.5v to 1.6v.

I must admit that increasing the RAM voltage made my system more stable. I still do experience random freezes but it's now days rather than on a daily basis. The longest I have gone so far without a freeze is approx 5-6 days.

I have a 450W PSU and it should be more than adequate for my system. When I was researching what components to purchase I used an online power calculator to ensure that my PSU was sized correctly based on my specs.

My Hackintosh is also connected to an APC Backup-UPS so I'm confident that my rig is receiving constant clean power. I've run out of ideas. So the problem is either OS/SW related or perhaps I still need to tweak my voltage settings. I wonder if Mavericks is very sensitive to system voltage? I've also disabled any power saving settings in Mavericks to rule out any issues with my system going to sleep and not being able to wake up again.

I think this is a really hard one to troubleshoot based on the number of posts regarding this issue on this board.

As a side note: I've noticed that after every freeze my Magic Trackpad stops working although my BT Apple keyboard doesn't encounter any issues. I'm forced to delete the Magic Trackpad from system preferences, then I have to disable BT and finally I have to actually remove my BT USB dongle then re-insert again before I can pair my Magic Trackpad again to get it working properly.

I've tried to simply delete and pair the Magic Trackpad but that hasn't worked. I've tried disabling and re-enabling BT from System Preferences and that hasn't helped either. It only works after I physically remove the BT USB dongle and re-insert!!! Very strange but that's the only way I can get it working flawlessly again!

Anyway, I'd be interested to learn if others have any success increasing their RAM voltage in BIOS.

Good luck!

 

[aaron97]

So I too have been having issues with random freezes on my newly built Hackintosh. I followed the hardware recommendations on this site along with all the recommended BIOS settings. I ensured that the RAM sticks I purchased were on the compatible list of my mobo.

Installation was a breeze but I immediately started to notice random freezes quite frequently, almost daily or every other day. So off to google I went and various boards including this one to try to find a solution and the only thing I could find was a reference to increasing your RAM voltage in BIOS from 1.5v to 1.6v.

I must admit that increasing the RAM voltage made my system more stable. I still do experience random freezes but it's now days rather than on a daily basis. The longest I have gone so far without a freeze is approx 5-6 days.

I have a 450W PSU and it should be more than adequate for my system. When I was researching what components to purchase I used an online power calculator to ensure that my PSU was sized correctly based on my specs.

My Hackintosh is also connected to an APC Backup-UPS so I'm confident that my rig is receiving constant clean power. I've run out of ideas. So the problem is either OS/SW related or perhaps I still need to tweak my voltage settings. I wonder if Mavericks is very sensitive to system voltage? I've also disabled any power saving settings in Mavericks to rule out any issues with my system going to sleep and not being able to wake up again.

I think this is a really hard one to troubleshoot based on the number of posts regarding this issue on this board.

As a side note: I've noticed that after every freeze my Magic Trackpad stops working although my BT Apple keyboard doesn't encounter any issues. I'm forced to delete the Magic Trackpad from system preferences, then I have to disable BT and finally I have to actually remove my BT USB dongle then re-insert again before I can pair my Magic Trackpad again to get it working properly.

I've tried to simply delete and pair the Magic Trackpad but that hasn't worked. I've tried disabling and re-enabling BT from System Preferences and that hasn't helped either. It only works after I physically remove the BT USB dongle and re-insert!!! Very strange but that's the only way I can get it working flawlessly again!

Anyway, I'd be interested to learn if others have any success increasing their RAM voltage in BIOS.

Good luck!

I would try running memtest overnight (at regular voltages) and see if you have fault ram.

 

[Kelco83]

I would try running memtest overnight (at regular voltages) and see if you have fault ram.

+1 was logging in to say the same thing.

 

[Tino2]

Im Trying the same with increasing ram voltage, well see what happens.
I already did Memtest run all night without any results....

 

[killjoy]

Meh I tried that already a while ago, went from 1.50 to 1.60 and didn't fix the freezes. Guess it works for some.

 

[mpulse]

So based on the recommendations I ran memtest for nearly 18 hours and it did not detect any problems. So at this point it's safe to say that I don't have any defective RAM sticks in my system.

Per my original message, I never said that increasing your RAM voltage will permanently fix the random freezing issue but it may provide more stability. With my RAM voltage increased to 1.6 I can go several days without any freezing but at 1.5v my system would freeze on a daily basis.

 

[Ly-sAn]

I changed the voltage of my RAM from 1.35 to 1.5 (can't do higher) and I didn't have any freeze for 5 hours this morning. Before I had freezes every 30 minutes to 2 hours so I think it solved the problem. I will keep you informed when I will have another freeze.

Thank you so much mpulse.

 

[jameswuk]

Hi all,

To add to this, I can confirm that I increased my RAM voltage from 1.5 to 1.6V on my Z87N based 'CustoMac Mini Pro' yesterday morning, and since then I have had no crashes in 36 hours.

Before, if I left the Hackintosh overnight, by morning, it would have frozen.

I'm not ready to declare that it's solved the issue, but it's (so far) definitely seemed to have helped.



Regards,

James

P.S. For those of you running a Z87N Rev. 1 board (which is what Amazon UK seem to be still supplying), the update from version F2 of the BIOS to F4 seems to have made things a lot more stable.

 

[pcweeniescomic]

I came across this thread after encountering random freezes on my Hackintosh.

Based on the threads, I've bumped up the memory voltage from 1.5V to 1.6V. I'll report back in a few days if the freezes have gone away. After I made the voltage adjustment, my Hackintosh went into kernel panic after loading the progress bar with the gray Apple logo. Clearing the kernel cache after booting into verbose mode seems to have cleared that problem. Time will tell if the voltage adjustment worked.

 

[soyasoo]

I'm not sure is my issue same with you guys. Well, my hackintosh with OS Mavericks ONLY encounter the freezing problem when i shut down. Does changing the RAM Voltage in BIOS will help too?

Thanks!