Gigabyte has released new firmware and software updates for the Gigabyte Control Center (GCC) for Intel 600 and 700 series motherboards that fix a very unusual and annoying bug related to the operation of the SPD (Serial Presence Detect) chip. fix on DDR5 memory modules. This chip contains metadata about the RAM modules.
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Some users in Baidu Tieba’s Chinese community have complained about persistent problems with DDR5 memory modules on Gigabyte motherboards with Intel 600 and 700 series chipsets. For example, one user reported that their Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX motherboard stopped correctly recognizing one of the DDR5 RAM modules. However, when the board managed to start the memory bar, it incorrectly determined the module’s capacity of 384 GB. Later, one of the overclocking XMP profiles disappeared from the RAM module, and in the DDR5-6000 profile, the system replaced the timings with an incredible 1-36-104-194. According to the user, he replaced the “faulty” memory module with another that was known to work, but the result was the same. A memory error occurs randomly. Sometimes after a month of module operation, sometimes after a week and sometimes after several days from the moment of installation in the PC.
Another Gigabyte motherboard owner reported similar behavior of DDR5 RAM modules. His system crashed and rebooted frequently. After one such incident, a user found that his RAM had “lost” the AMD EXPO profile. In another case, the work of the XMP DDR5-6800 profile was disrupted – the motherboard set unrealistic timings 34-153-0-0 for it.
Chinese users dubbed this situation the “burning memory problem”. At first, many initially thought that Gigabyte boards would really damage DDR5 memory modules, since in some cases computers would no longer boot at all. Fortunately, as it turned out later, the problem is only related to the memory timing settings and does not affect the operating voltage of the RAM modules. From a hardware point of view, everything is also fine with the Gigabyte mainboards. The cause of the problem turned out to be the SPD chip on the memory modules and the RAM parameters it incorrectly provided for the system.
Gigabyte has recognized the problem by contacting its customers through the official Aorus page on the social network Bilibili and has clarified some details. In its statement, Gigabyte blamed RAM vendors in particular for the situation – some of them incorrectly implement the SPD write protection function. This is a protection that prevents access to data on the SPD chip.
According to Gigabyte, without properly working SPD write protection, there is a small chance that SPD data may not be displayed correctly when using DDR5 memory and the GCC application. However, the company did not explain how motherboards or the GCC application can “overwrite” SPD data. Fortunately, nothing is damaged in this case. To restore the operation of the RAM module, you just need to update the SPD firmware. To fix the issue, Gigabyte recommended owners of motherboards based on Intel 600 and 700 series chipsets to install the latest BIOS versions for their motherboards and update GCC to the latest version.
In the BIOS description of the latest F6 version for the board Z790 Aaoru’s Tachyon or firmware version FN for the board Z690 Aorus Elite AX It states that the new software release “restores SPD write protection and fixes a DDR5 memory compatibility issue that occurs because a module fails to properly provide JEDEC SPD protection options.”
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