Memtest questions, major memory issues

[Nattan]

Well I am having a lot of memory errors and at this point I am not sure if its my ram or my motherboard.

Ram:

Mushkin Enhanced Redline 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226274

Motherboard:

ASUS P9X79 WS LGA 2011

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131798

What i have done:

-I have run memtest with all the ram sticks and I got over 65k errors on some particular tests.

-Pulled all the ram and test each stick one by one ( marked the ones that had errors )

-RMA a set of ram i have 32GB total, with 16GB ( 4x4 sets )

-the New rma i got off the rma, put all those sticks in ran test for 2 hours and came back with over 900 errors

-booted to windows played a game and had tons of crashes.

-decided that the ram must not be the issue, ran a test on one stick for 4 hours 0 errors about 20 passes or so. then i took that same stick and tried it in different channels, computer would not boot on any of the second lane channels with out another stick in the dimm 1 slot. ( black lanes, the blue ones worked in any lane )

This is my second RMA on this ram, I am not sure what else to do aside ask for a full refund ( not sure i will get it since i purchased the ram from newegg a year ago, and would be asking for the refund from the company)

soo out of 12 sticks only 2 are decent, and two only run with minor error ranges under 100 ( lowest is 20 per full 1-10 test pass and the other is 100 )

Any suggestions?

[Guest]

I wouldn't be looking at the RAM as the issue but rather either the CPU or the motherboard. I say this because of what you said regarding different channels having different issues. The CPU could also be a possibility as that contains the memory controller. Do you have another set of RAM you could borrow from a friend and swap in or another system that you can run MemTest on with this RAM?

[Wats]

Have you flashed your board to the latest Bios?

If you don't want to flash it then you can manually raise the IMC voltage and see if that helps. X79 chips don't exactly love fast memory, nor do they need it. You could just set it to 1600 and some nice, tight timings.

Are you using mem86 or the HCI memtest?

[Morfy]

Hey, i'd like to say that i have a very similar problem, maybe i can help you find a workaround/solution. So, first of all, my problem: i had a 2 4gb stick dual channel vengeance , i put them in the black slots on a asus p8h77-v le, after 2 months i started to have some crazy crashes, memtest showed the stick near the cpu with tons of errors, the other was fine, and at the same time i had a xms3 8gb stick in the blue slot, it was also fine, i RMA the vengeance kit, got a brand new one, after a month in the same setup, the stick on the far right, black slot got tons of errors, the xms on blue was fine, now i am sure it is my mobo, i can't find a reason to be my CPU, altough i ran it for a while with 106 bclk, but it should be fine, so i suggest getting an error free stick and test all the lanes and only use the ones that will not give you errors after a period of time if you can't remember which were where, and don't use your friend's, you will damage it, you can always RMA the board, i'll do that once i have the money

[Morfy]

I'm sorry, i exchanged the slots colors by mistake, blue is black and black is blue XD

[Nattan]

Have you flashed your board to the latest Bios? If you don't want to flash it then you can manually raise the IMC voltage and see if that helps. X79 chips don't exactly love fast memory' date=' nor do they need it. You could just set it to 1600 and some nice, tight timings. Are you using mem86 or the HCI memtest? [/quote']

mem86 version 2.4.0

I wouldn't be looking at the RAM as the issue but rather either the CPU or the motherboard. I say this because of what you said regarding different channels having different issues. The CPU could also be a possibility as that contains the memory controller. Do you have another set of RAM you could borrow from a friend and swap in or another system that you can run MemTest on with this RAM?

I only have one set of ram and only one lga 2011 system

Have you flashed your board to the latest Bios? If you don't want to flash it then you can manually raise the IMC voltage and see if that helps. X79 chips don't exactly love fast memory' date=' nor do they need it. You could just set it to 1600 and some nice, tight timings. Are you using mem86 or the HCI memtest? [/quote']

Last bios update was around 3 months ago, so its not super out of date if it is. mem86

Hey' date=' i'd like to say that i have a very similar problem, maybe i can help you find a workaround/solution. So, first of all, my problem: i had a 2 4gb stick dual channel vengeance , i put them in the black slots on a asus p8h77-v le, after 2 months i started to have some crazy crashes, memtest showed the stick near the cpu with tons of errors, the other was fine, and at the same time i had a xms3 8gb stick in the blue slot, it was also fine, i RMA the vengeance kit, got a brand new one, after a month in the same setup, the stick on the far right, black slot got tons of errors, the xms on blue was fine, now i am sure it is my mobo, i can't find a reason to be my CPU, altough i ran it for a while with 106 bclk, but it should be fine, so i suggest getting an error free stick and test all the lanes and only use the ones that will not give you errors after a period of time if you can't remember which were where, and don't use your friend's, you will damage it, you can always RMA the board, i'll do that once i have the money[/quote']

well i did try this, but the computer refused to boot with just one stick in certain lanes, but tested perfectly with two and ran memtest with 0 errors, so i am not sure what exactly is causing the issue.

[Levent]

from that last statement i agree with windspeed it might be memory controller(which is in CPU) or motherboard

[Nattan]

i have also considered that, but i dont have any way to test either. I guess i could rma the board and the cpu but i dont know how well that would work.

[Wats]

Hey, wait.......

Right above your 24 pin there is a MemOK button. Reboot your rig and get ready to press and hold down that button for a few seconds while it is booting.

I've used that button a ton of times, works almost every time. Is a little tricky though, pushing it and all....

[Nattan]

Hey' date=' wait....... Right above your 24 pin there is a MemOK button. Reboot your rig and get ready to press and hold down that button for a few seconds while it is booting. I've used that button a ton of times, works almost every time. Is a little tricky though, pushing it and all.... [/quote']

ill give it a shot

[AJRicho]

Okey So far i read up an it totally normal for this board not to boot with a single dimm in any of the black slots. According to the manual you should use dimm D1 (blue) for a single dimm boot. Then D1 and B1 for 2 and then D1 B1 C1 And A1 for 4. Then move on to black dimms. Also note that your ram is not on the supported list of memory for this board. Although often ram isn't on the list an works perfectly fine. Sometimes it can be a issue. Your could try setting the voltage to all channels manually to 1.65v this will help as i believe this board default at 1.50v.

Also manually setting the timings. You could also try under clocking the ram at say 1600mhz and test.

[Nattan]

the ram loads perfectly at 1.65 and the timings are correct, ive reset the cosmos and clocked it down to 1600 spec so far so good. I havnt yet adjusted the timings down for the slower clock speed but that isnt really an issue atm. i think i could run 9-9-9-24 with this ram at 1600 maybe even like their 1600 redline series at 7-9-8-24

[Morfy]

Are you still running the error ram? If so, do a memtest after the timings change

[Morfy]

Altough it won't change anything

[Nattan]

No i am only running 4 sticks atm, ill have more time this weekend to fully test it out, still no major errors ( program crashes) but I do notice some programs hang for a few seconds at times but not that bad. adjusting the clock down to 1600 seemed to help a lot

[Morfy]

So now you're not getting errors in memtest?

[HEXiT]

after seeing your ram speed you may be hitting the 1 stick per channel limit of the i7 cpu's mmu. where if your running ram faster than what the cpu can handle nativley, your system gets limited to using 1 stick per channel. so running 8 sticks of ddr3 2100 will just cause your system to constantly wobble... so if your ram has a jdec of 1866 run it at that, this way you get the fastest ram your system can handle and you wont be limited to 1 stick per channel.

also go into bios and make sure hpet is enabled (ahci menu on a eufi bios) this will help stabalise a wobbly system also. but it wont help your ram issue.

[Nattan]

So now you're not getting errors in memtest?

I ram memtest still only on the 4 sticks and so far no issues with like 2 and 1/2 passes ( didnt do a full 24hour test though )

after seeing your ram speed you may be hitting the 1 stick per channel limit of the i7 cpu's mmu. where if your running ram faster than what the cpu can handle nativley' date=' your system gets limited to using 1 stick per channel. so running 8 sticks of ddr3 2100 will just cause your system to constantly wobble... so if your ram has a jdec of 1866 run it at that, this way you get the fastest ram your system can handle and you wont be limited to 1 stick per channel. also go into bios and make sure hpet is enabled (ahci menu on a eufi bios) this will help stabalise a wobbly system also. but it wont help your ram issue.[/quote']

I am running in raid mode, as i have a raid 5 array in this system. my understanding that ahci mode is the same as raid and hpet is on