Troubleshooting memory or memory adjanced issues

[LauRoman]

I am troubleshooting my nephew's PC.

It has random browser crashes or microsoft defender crashes. Probably other crashes too, but that is what i could observe so far. It did not used to do this, only starte about a week ago, as far as i gather.

It is a p8h77-m motherboard with a sandy bridge xeon e3-1230, with an assortment of unbuffered ddr3 memory.

 

I understand that memtest86 may not be a reliable indicator of faulty memory, i just used it as a confirmation that there IS something affecting memory.

 

What i did so far is reset the bios and used each memory in each dimm slot (16 tests right there). As soon as a second ram stick is added, memtest crashes 6 seconds in, it does not matter which slots they are positioned in, dual or single channel mode.

 

I swapped the cpu for a celeron i keep for troubleshooting and the exact same issues, runs fine with a single stick, but memtest freezes and some programs eventually crash in windows.

 

Memory sticks are not the same, and while i can't 100% rule out incompatibilities, it would be weird them showing up so late, because i tested the machine almost continuously for 4 days when i assembled it from what i had lieing around a few years back, and it had no memory issues. Since i don't have another compatible motherboard i really can't exclude that both cpus have the exact same fault, but the odds of that are very low.

 

So, my immediate conclusion is that the mothetboard is the issue.

 

Is there anything i missed or i should test for?

[kelvinhall05]

22 minutes ago, LauRoman said:

I understand that memtest86 may not be a reliable indicator of faulty memory

Where did you hear this? It's bullshit lol.

22 minutes ago, LauRoman said:

As soon as a second ram stick is added, memtest crashes 6 seconds in, it does not matter which slots they are positioned in, dual or single channel mode.

 

23 minutes ago, LauRoman said:

I swapped the cpu for a celeron i keep for troubleshooting and the exact same issues, runs fine with a single stick, but memtest freezes and some programs eventually crash in windows.

All of this as well as your OS/program crashes indicate faulty RAM. I'm honestly not sure how you came to the conclusion that it was the motherboard.

[HannahLewis]

Everything you have described screams faulty RAM...

[LauRoman]

3 hours ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Where did you hear this? It's bullshit lol.

 

All of this as well as your OS/program crashes indicate faulty RAM. I'm honestly not sure how you came to the conclusion that it was the motherboard.

 

2 hours ago, f1ght43v3r said:

Everything you have described screams faulty RAM...

Ok, but how come if i test each stick of ram one at a time, no issues arise? Please read all of my post before jumping to conclusons.

[kelvinhall05]

2 minutes ago, LauRoman said:

 

Ok, but how come if i test each stick of ram one at a time, no issues arise? Please read all of my post before jumping to conclusons.

There is likely an incompatability between the RAM sticks.

 

I'm not jumping to a conclusion. You literally came to it yourself, then threw it to the side and claimed the motherboard is broken.

[LauRoman]

19 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

There is likely an incompatability between the RAM sticks.

 

I'm not jumping to a conclusion. You literally came to it yourself, then threw it to the side and claimed the motherboard is broken.

Again, read the whole post. This started recently, machine has not had this issue for about two years. If i ignore the fact that it had no issues for that long, then you are right. Otherwise, please take all of the symptoms into account.

[kelvinhall05]

1 minute ago, LauRoman said:

Again, read the whole post. This started recently, machine has not had this issue for about two years. If i ignore the fact that it had no issues for that long, then you are right. Otherwise, please take all of the symptoms into account.

RAM can die overtime. It is extremely uncommon for a motherboard to degrade overtime, and I've never heard of that causing the problem you're experiencing.

 

Do you have a kit of two sticks of identical RAM you can test with?

[LauRoman]

21 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

RAM can die overtime. It is extremely uncommon for a motherboard to degrade overtime, and I've never heard of that causing the problem you're experiencing.

 

Do you have a kit of two sticks of identical RAM you can test with?

Yes, two of the four are identical generic hynix based sticks, and the machine seems fine with no issues with either one of them in each dimm slot, but as soon as i add the second, memtest fails six seconds in, no matter which slots they are in, and some windows programs eventually crash.

 

I do have some other ram, one 2 gb stick, and four identical 4 gb sticks and a compatible motherboard (but that motherboard and those four sticks are tied up in a home server i can't really afford to have too much downtime on).

 

When i get home, all the downtime i can really afford is to swap the entire RAM set with the mixed one and test that.

 

If it fails with all of the other RAM it would be weird to call the new RAM broken since the home server it runs on is up 24/7 and has had no issues, because i do remote into it at least once a day.