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Problem With Ram & Mobo
Rye
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have a motherboard and I purchased this Ram for it. My rig has been running awesome.
I recently ordered a second kit of that ram to max out my motherboard at 16gb (I do lots of multitasking, rendering, working in 5 adobe programs at a time etc.) I installed it after verifying it was the exact same kit, but my computer failed to boot. I believe it failed at the mem check. I removed the Ram, apparently after corrupting my BIOS and having to recover using my windows cd.
Now, How do I go about troubleshooting this problem? I know the memory isn't listed under the "supported memory" for the board, but it's GSkill and the other kit worked fine. I don't have a voltmeter or a spare rig around to test the Ram again, and I don't wanna risk anything else bad happening on my now-good rig. How can I ensure that A) the board isn't at fault and
the Memory isn't bricked?
I'm relatively new to computer building, so I barely know how to assemble a computer with functioning parts, let alone diagnose a mechanically faulty piece of hardware.
Thanks in advance, H&A.
UPDATE -
So, I swapped in my other RAM and it was functional. However, I still can't get 4 dimms to work at the same time. I tried some other things like flipping the "OV DRAM" switch (adding voltage) and that got it to boot once. I checked the installed RAM in windows, and it was giving me "16gb (8 Usable)", si I doubt it was actually working correctly. But then it stopped booting with 4 sticks again.
The RAM was lower voltage, I thought (1.5v) so I don't know what the problem is. I thought I could manually set some voltage numbers in the BIOS, but I can't get it to boot with 4 anymore. Any more advice?
I recently ordered a second kit of that ram to max out my motherboard at 16gb (I do lots of multitasking, rendering, working in 5 adobe programs at a time etc.) I installed it after verifying it was the exact same kit, but my computer failed to boot. I believe it failed at the mem check. I removed the Ram, apparently after corrupting my BIOS and having to recover using my windows cd.
Now, How do I go about troubleshooting this problem? I know the memory isn't listed under the "supported memory" for the board, but it's GSkill and the other kit worked fine. I don't have a voltmeter or a spare rig around to test the Ram again, and I don't wanna risk anything else bad happening on my now-good rig. How can I ensure that A) the board isn't at fault and
the Memory isn't bricked?I'm relatively new to computer building, so I barely know how to assemble a computer with functioning parts, let alone diagnose a mechanically faulty piece of hardware.
Thanks in advance, H&A.
UPDATE -
So, I swapped in my other RAM and it was functional. However, I still can't get 4 dimms to work at the same time. I tried some other things like flipping the "OV DRAM" switch (adding voltage) and that got it to boot once. I checked the installed RAM in windows, and it was giving me "16gb (8 Usable)", si I doubt it was actually working correctly. But then it stopped booting with 4 sticks again.
The RAM was lower voltage, I thought (1.5v) so I don't know what the problem is. I thought I could manually set some voltage numbers in the BIOS, but I can't get it to boot with 4 anymore. Any more advice?
Rye on
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- You can seed several sticks of memory in at a time to isolate a possible faulty stick of RAM. One bad stick and the whole thing will will go broke.
- By also swapping out known good RAM with unknown RAM it will help test the capacity of the operating system. As far as I know Windows 7 or OS X MAC are the only series of OS that can handle more than 8 GB with out some third party drivers.
- Check your device manager. Before swapping make sure all drivers are good. If you have any yellow triangles with a black "!", then something is up. These errors could compound the situation.
- Last make sure no static is around when you seed the RAM. Any jolt will ruin equipment.
I do agree that as along as you have DDR3 a.k.a. PC3 and that is what is printed on the motherboard, hardware capability is not the issue. Take a crack at it and let us know?
A BIOS update, yeah, that could fix things if the RAM actually appears to be good. But otherwise, you just need to do hardware troubleshooting. And yeah, I hope you know this already, but try to minimize static and ground yourself when you're messing around in there by touching a metal part of the case (or better yet, get one of those anti-static wristbands) to avoid any chance of zapping components. I maintain, though, that you probably just have a bad stick of RAM and probably nothing else will be relevant to you. :P
One more piece of evidence - when i was originally seating the RAM while building the computer the first time, I think I ended up having to shift ram around because it wouldn't boot. However, I attributed this to not correctly seating them to work as a dual channel (every other seat versus 2 consecutive seats - ABAB instead of AABB).
This makes me think that maybe the motherboard might have something wrong with it, which sucks because I think I'm way outside the warranty.
I'll re-seat the "good" ram in the other slots to confirm.
Also, just to clear it up, I'm running Windows 7 Pro 64bit SP1- it ought to be able to use the 16gb of ram.
EDIT - I ended up using the recover CD because it claimed I made hardware changes. Everything went back to as it was before, so although everything's fixed I didn't want to jump back in and risk doing more damage.
So, I swapped in my other RAM and it was functional. However, I still can't get 4 dimms to work at the same time. I tried some other things like flipping the "OV DRAM" switch (adding voltage) and that got it to boot once. I checked the installed RAM in windows, and it was giving me "16gb (8 Usable)", si I doubt it was actually working correctly. But then it stopped booting with 4 sticks again.
The RAM was lower voltage, I thought (1.5v) so I don't know what the problem is. I thought I could manually set some voltage numbers in the BIOS, but I can't get it to boot with 4 anymore. Any more advice?
Can you boot with 3 sticks in?
I am not joking.
Does any of that sound like it might help? I've NEVER had to adjust timings for a kit to work before, as I don't usually dabble with any kind of overclocking etc.
Take my advice and make sure you mounted your motherboard correctly. It will take about 20 minutes and could just solve your problem. I'm telling you I had a problem just like yours (except with a dual socket MOBO). I was having just weird memory problems that made little to no logical sense. Turns out I had a bit of a short (not necessarily one that prevented me from turning the MOBO on) that was causing the memory to fault in a seemingly "random" way that doesn't make any sense.