Added ram, now I get boot errors and disk read errors.

[Bradwin]

I have recently bought a 8GB ram stick. I previously had 2x4GB ram sticks in slot 2 and 4 of my motherboard (same colour slots for dual channel). It started giving me errors, the red lights on the motherboard would light up for DRAM. then for VGA, and it eventually got fixed after fixing the ram better in slot 1 and running the memory setup, although I still cannot explain how I got it to work as I have done absolutely nothing other than keep resetting and choosing to go into the bios without any changes. Computer ran smooth, it recognised that I had 3 out of 4 slots occupied and 16 GB of ram. The next day, I run into a "disk read" error and then it changed to "Select proper boot device" . I have Windows 10 installed on my Kingston 256GB SSD, and it worked pretty well until now, the SSD is 6 months old at best (bought it in July). I have looked into BIOS and it is first priority in the booting list (set as "UEFI Hard Disk"). Right now, the only solution I can find is re-installing Windows, but I really want to know how my RAM can mess this whole thing up. As of now, ram setup is like this: My motherboard has 2 black slots(slots 2 and 4) and 2 white slots(slots 1 and 3) - the black slots are occupied by my 2x4 GB Hyperx Fury DDR4 2133MHz, and slot 1 is taken up by my Hyperx Savage DDR4 2133MHz. I have read that it is not necessary to use dual channel on a dual channel motherboard, but I haven't found any instance in which there were 3/4 slots used.

 

EDIT: I should also had that I had bought the ram from a friend, so it had been in use before. He made sure to ask me if my other ram sticks were DDR4 at 2133MHz.

 

Specs:

Windows 10

motherboard: 150M Bazooka (has dual channel)

Geforce GTX 1660

Intel Core i5-6402P

ZM600-LE

2x4 GB Hyperx Fury ram cards DDR4 2133MHz

1x8GB Hyperx Savage DDR4 2133MHz

Kingston 256GB SSD

WD Blue 1 TB HDD

Edited December 28, 2019 by Bradwin
added more context

[WhisterWhy]

Different brands?? I used to mix n' max my ram and it caused me to crash a few times. It's best to use the same brand/model of ram if you can help it.
another thing is that there could be some weird anomaly where the rated speed difference could be messing with the stability of one of the sticks.

I don't experiment with RAM a lot so i am just theorizing. 

mixing different memory capacities is likely what is causing your issues. Try just using the 2x4 kit until you can get another 8gb stick. whatever the lowest capacity is what the system will assume the other sticks are. your 8gb stick could bee read as 4gb and then thee data loaded from the disk could be misplaced due to the assumption of capacity.

again, i'm no expert, but that is my idea of your problem.


 

[Cedar]

the difference is ram timings might be causing the problem. Check the CAS latencies on each of your sticks to see if they match.  Different timings will often create instability. Mixing capacities could be the problem but I have a friend running in that config and his works fine, of course it's not ideal but it should work. I'm not sure but I think you can adjust memory timings in the BIOS, see if you can do that. 

[Bradwin]

I have updated my BIOS, it lacked several "Memory compatibiliy" updates. So far, it's solved.

 

For more details, my Hyperx Fury was CL14 and Hyperx Savage was CL13, there was no need to fix clock timings manualy. Hopefuly, the problem will not come back like last time.

 

EDIT: The problem has come back now. I have decided to remove the 8 GB ram stick and go back to normal, but now every time I try to reboot I either get a "Reboot and Insert Boot Media" or it stucks at the Windows loading screen or it goes into Windows Automatic Repair and then prompts me to restart.

Edited December 29, 2019 by Bradwin
Updated

[Bradwin]

I've solved the issue. Had to plug the SATA cable from my SSD in another slot as to reset its booting settings. Nevertheless, how can a ram with a different clock timing affect the booting settings?