HELP ryzen pc destroying RAM

[Jack Dobson]

Hello everyone, I built my pc back in January with a ryzen 5 1600x and a Asus x370 f. I had bought a 1x8gb stick of corsair Vengeance clocked at 3000mhz. Everything was fine and stable with a 4.1ghz over clock and the ram running at 3000mhz. I wanted to upgrade to 16gbs so I bought a 2x4gb kit of corsair Vengeance at 3200mhz, which I ran at 3000mhz. Later it ran into quite a bit of stability issues (lots of crashing of my games and windows occasionally). I then got very angry and pulled out the 8 gb stick. Then it was fine, the 2x4 ran at 3333mhz but I was still looking for my 16gbs. When I saw a kit of 4x4 3200mhz of hyperx Predator on amazon for £90 I couldn't resist. I sold my current ram (making sure the buyer new the 8gb stick was only stable at 2800mhz) and ordered the new ram. It got very delayed and my dad order 2 other spare sticks (a 1x8 3200mhz corsair Vengeance and a 1x4 2666mhz crucial ballistix, which I got scammed on) so I could at least play. Then all of the ram came through on the same day.

 

So my problem is, I fitted all 4 of the sticks and it said "the system has POSTed in safe mode....." in the bios, and it only recognised 8 out of the 16gbs. After some expirementing, it would boot fine with 12gbs and run upto 3000mhz (not the 3200mhz I paid for). I then added the corsair Vengeance stick and it was fine, 20gbs of memory at 3200mhz. Because my pc was down for so long, I left it on overnight to complete my steam updates, and I wake up next morning to see "your system has posted in safe mode.....". I then rebooted it and it doesn't post, and the debug led is stuck on the DRAM colour. I removed the 8gb stick and my windows install has completely died, immediate blue screen won't even make it to the login screen.

 

We then download memtest64 onto a thumb drive and have done a number of tests. The good (yesterday) 3x4gb sticks of hyperx were fine at 3000mhz occasionally not 3200mhz, but were completely stable at 2400mhz which were what the were normally in the bios. And the system refused to post with the original bad stick of 4gbs of hyperx or the corsair Vengeance.

 

So what do I do, is it the motherboard killing the ram or the ram killing other ram? And what destroyed my windows install?

 

Thank you for your help

 

[Jurrunio]

Have you ever updated the bios?

[Lord Mirdalan]

Have you tried each stick one at a time to see if they are actually dead? It might be a mobo issue.

[SpookyCitrus]

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Have you ever updated the bios?

 

1 minute ago, Lord Mirdalan said:

Have you tried each stick one at a time to see if they are actually dead? It might be a mobo issue.

 

@Jack Dobson All of these, plus sometimes mix and matching DDR4 ram kits like that has a negative effect, it can cause the instability you are getting especially if they are all different speeds and you are overclocking them. Why keep buying all these different kits and trying to mix and match just use a regular kit or buy one for the speed and size you need? DDR3 was like the terminator of ram you could slap any stick at any speed or size and it wouldn't so much as stutter, but DDR4 has some issues, especially in motherboards that have specific slots for specific channel types. It blows me away you've bought 3 or 4 different kits and all the hassle you're going through in order to get 16GB of ram. Make sure the PC is off, insert your 4x4GB kit of hyperx predator and do a bios update if it needs one, reset the bios to default and see if it shows all 16GB at 2133mhz which it should, then enable X.M.P it should automatically have a profile for 3200mhz, save the settings and exit bios to load into windows. It should work then and if it doesn't it's probably an issue with the motherboard or memory controller. 

[gcubed]

As SpookyCitrus said, when using DDR4 ram it is always best to use rams SETS. You can mix and match but that can take days of fiddling with bios settings and the results are never as good as using a set of ram sticks. Basically mix and match is migraine inducing for even the most expert among us.

 

Additionally, ram clocked over 2133 is considered an overclock. The listed ram speed for a stick or set is not a guarantee, it is a certification. 3200mhz ram has been tested and certified to run at 3200mhz but what you can actually run it at will vary from system to system (in some rare cases you might even be able to run if faster).

 

I would suggest doing as Spooky said with the exception of booting at 2133mhz. Then stress test the memory. Then selecting the next up XMP profile and stress testing. Keep repeating the process until you run into stability issues. Then back it down one step and leave it there.