RGB FUSION 2.0 killing DDR3 RAM

[setuben84]

I am in the same boat. I just got a bsod after the install of RGB Fusion 2.0 and running it and attempting to change profile, probably within 30 second time frame. After rebooting I have no display detected with no mouse or keyboard lights. RAM is likely dead, can't afford to replace to see right now. This is nuts

[Bob Smith]

Happened to me as well. Installed RGB Fusion 2.0 and then PC failed on restart. Looks like my DDR3 memory modules got nuked.
Are Gigabyte aware of this problem?

[a3u]

So i am the latest victim. I have a 2070 from gigabyte. Everything runs fine, temps, performance. Installed rgb fusion from their website, i restarted my pc and got stuck in the bios, 3 times. After that, pc wont work anymore. It destroyed 32gigs of brandnew ram from ddr3 set upa

Also tested the 2070 on my 3700x, installed rgb fusion and

Killed my 16gigs of ddr4 the same way. This is my first time using this software because before, i was using the decent xtreme gaming software with rgb controls in it.

[Vioid Drivo]

It sounds impossible, but this issue is very real. The same exact thing just happened to me today. RGB Fusion killed all 4 of my ram sticks that were installed in my PC.

I installed AORUS Engine, which also installed RGB Fusion. When I opened Aorus Engine and clicked on the LED option, my PC had a bluescreen. It then rebooted and was stuck on the BIOS screen. I spent hours trying to fix my PC. I realized that my PC would normally boot when used only one ram stick from another PC.
I tested my 4 ram sticks in another PC, one by one, and none of them works. This is just insane.
Made a thread on Twitter about this.

 

[Diego Souza]

Sorry for the ressurection of this post, but my friend just "bricked" 7 RAMs because of RGB Fusion (we think). I just found this through google and here we are.

His specs:

 

Motherboard: asus P8P67-M
CPU: i7 2600

GPU: RTX 3060

 

He formatted his PC, then one day later his RTX3060 came and he installed. He worked normally for two days, then installed RGB Fusion and showed to his girlfriend the LED changing colors (not from the RAM, because his ram doesn't have rgb). He turned of his pc and went to sleep. The next day his PC turned on but no video on the monitor. He didn't know what happened so I advised him to change to the old GPU and didn't worked. So he took the SSD off, HDD off, even just let one RAM and nothing worked. 

 

He had another 3 sets of OLD 4g rams, so he tried just one and the pc booted normally. He used for a few minutes then turned off and tried his normal RAM again, but didn't worked. So he put the old ram again and didn't worked this time... 

 

He put the two remaining old rams and the pc booted normally. He used the whole day, he saw some people saying that RGB Fusion was giving blue screen of death, and saw that there was a PATRIOT folder that RGB Fusion was installing and he deleted all. He turned off his pc and now it bricked the two remaining rams again. The pc is turned on, but no video on the monitor and there is a red light on the RAM on the motherboard. 

 

I found this through google because his motherboard is old and all his RAMs are DDR3, and happened exactly like AlfredManner said. I DON'T KNOW if it killed the RAM, but all of the 7 stopped working after he installed the RGB Fusion. He used this RAM for years without doing this, it's the first time he installed RGB Fusion.

[Aref.F]

On 5/10/2022 at 11:32 PM, AlfredManner said:

Hi I really need help confirming that it's not just my setup.

 

So I got myself a Gigabyte RTX 3090 master, installed it on my test bench, a Asus H81-Plus build, I installed gigabyte RGB fusion 2.0 program as suggested by Aorus engine.

 

I set the colour to change with the GPU temperature and I also set the small screen on the side of the Graphics card to display the temperature, vram, GPU usage etc via the RGB fusion 2.0 program, once I restarted my computer, it wouldn't boot up, not even to bios, I've narrowed it down to this program killing the ram, perhaps it's trying to write to the ram sticks bios or something, happened on three different sets of ram, at one point, I just went to uninstall the program but it also killed the set of rams in the machine that was used just to boot into windows.

 

 

I've not tried this on any ddr4 system as I don't want to risk it.. was hoping Linus could make a video on this as Gigabyte have taken the piss. I emailed Gigabyte and didn't get any response from them, it's like the classic bios corruption virus, you don't expect a software to go around flashing settings on incompatible hardware destroying them.

 

Can anyone please confirm if they are getting the some issue.

 

 

Thanks

Hi i have same problem

with asus H61 Plus and DDR3 RAMs

i Bought gigabyte 3070 and install aourse engine and RGB FUSION 2.0

my system work properly for 3 days and around 5 restarting

but suddenly

after shutdown

system stop to boot

not even POST Beep or bios

 

at first i think it was problem with my PSU so i chenged it

and ram broke again

then i try total diffrent motherboard

and it happen again too

 

i put broken ram on diffrent pc

and PSU start to heat up and PSU fan Start to work with 100% of power

 

for last TEST i want to delete Aourse Engine and RGB FUSION 2.0

and try gpu on my system for last time

 

 

 

 

[Aref.F]

On 5/11/2022 at 12:07 AM, AlfredManner said:

Indeed, have you tired it on a DDR3 system? Just having the software running using onboard graphics still managed to kill another pair of ram, if it was a power issues, the system would have abruptly shut down when GPU under load. I should know as one or my other systems did that. I'm no noob to system builds, I've been building systems as far back as 2002, RAM being volatile memory, you'd think the classic switching it off for a few minutes would solve it but no, not when this software tried writing and corrupted the flash rom on the memory stick themselves, how else do you think RGB fusion 2.0 sets gigabyte aorus RAM stick LED colours.

 

 

If required, I could get a new set of ddr3 ram just to make a YouTube video and post it, good thing about that is I could return the dead rams for a refund.

 

 

"good thing about that is I could return the dead rams for a refund."

what do you mean by that?

is there way to fix RAMs or something like that?

[Aref.F]

"Thank for your informative response, and I can confirm I was able to get those killed ddr3 rams working again by backing up the SPD IC from an identical working stick. And yes, I was able to kill it again with that shit software on a different system, this time on an AMD phenom X6."

 

can you teach me how to fix my rams?

[SteveK89]

I had exactly the same problem yesterday. I was trying to change the color of the RGB lighting on my GPU and I couldn't find any way to do it in GeForce Experience or Nvidia Control Panel, so I googled it and a few people recommended RGB Fusion. I downloaded and installed it got a bsod 20 minutes later and only once did my computer try to boot up. It hung on Post and after that I had no signal out of any of my HDMI or display ports. I tried everything. I gave up.

 

Then after a nap I googled a bit and found this thread. I had an extra stick of Ddr3 that I installed and quickly uninstalled RGB Fusion and deleted the Patriot folder (located in /program files). On reboot the spare stick of ram was bricked as well. I ordered more on Amazon for next day delivery and just installed it. I have rebooted about 6 times so far an no problems. 

 

I just can not believe that Gigabyte has this software available on their website and that people are recommending it when it can damage potentially a couple of hundred dollars worth of hardware.

 

Also, as a note I checked my output power from my psu and everything appears to be totally fine on that end. The fact that no I have had no issues since removing the software and installing new some new ram is proof to me that this is not a hardware issue, but a problem with RGB Fusion. This needs to be addressed and I think LTT would be doing every budget pc gamer a good service in covering this issue.

[CikoCiko]

Hi friends.

 

I found a way to fix this problem. I saved 3 of my Rams. I made a short video about it.

 

 

Program you need;

1. RWEverything

2. Thaiphoon Burner (For those who don't have the same Ram)

 

If you don't have the same ram as your faulty ram, you can download Ram Spd with Thaiphoon Burner program. With the SPD Browser feature in Thaiphoon Burner program, you can find the model of your ram and download its SPD.

 

Important: This solution can be risky. Try this solution with the cheapest motherboard possible. Plug the Faulty Ram into the socket as soon as possible after the boot process.

 

I hope you can recover your ram.

[Blaaz]

I got the same problem that others have reported, the computer died with BSOD 2 mins after installed "RGB Fusion 2.0"

 

I just wanted to turn off the RGB colors of the cooler... x1000.

 

I tried everything: checked CPU, mother, power, HDD, unplugged everything, with each memory individually, in diferent combinations, in each slot, etcetcetc.

 

and I found this forum, got a new DDR3, removed all the old DDRs from the mother and TADAM it Booted without any problem. I lost 20gb DDR3. (F)

 

I try the CikoCiko solution (btw Thanks for posting the video): but I cant even connect one of the other memories in any of the other slots that the machine does not:

do the BIOS POST, or it hangs after I inserted while running (I know that this is very risky approach, but I tried it anyway)

 

Also tried in the BIOS:

Overwrite any memory config, trying to replace SPD config with manual one, overcloking, using safe-config. nop, every time I connect one of those ram, it doesn't boot.

 

I believe this was posted before, but just in case:

YOU MUST UNINSTALL RGB FUSION 2.0 !!

If you recover your ram or got a new one, do not enter in windows with RGB Fusion 2.0 still installed, its going to brick your memory again (Posible solutions: reinstall windows or a little risky one is start windows in safe mode and then uninstall the app)

 

so no full recovery for my machine yet. (I still have the new memory to keep trying...)

 

 

[CikoCiko]

18 hours ago, Blaaz said:

I got the same problem that others have reported, the computer died with BSOD 2 mins after installed "RGB Fusion 2.0"

 

I just wanted to turn off the RGB colors of the cooler... x1000.

 

I tried everything: checked CPU, mother, power, HDD, unplugged everything, with each memory individually, in diferent combinations, in each slot, etcetcetc.

 

and I found this forum, got a new DDR3, removed all the old DDRs from the mother and TADAM it Booted without any problem. I lost 20gb DDR3. (F)

 

I try the CikoCiko solution (btw Thanks for posting the video): but I cant even connect one of the other memories in any of the other slots that the machine does not:

do the BIOS POST, or it hangs after I inserted while running (I know that this is very risky approach, but I tried it anyway)

 

Also tried in the BIOS:

Overwrite any memory config, trying to replace SPD config with manual one, overcloking, using safe-config. nop, every time I connect one of those ram, it doesn't boot.

 

I believe this was posted before, but just in case:

YOU MUST UNINSTALL RGB FUSION 2.0 !!

If you recover your ram or got a new one, do not enter in windows with RGB Fusion 2.0 still installed, its going to brick your memory again (Posible solutions: reinstall windows or a little risky one is start windows in safe mode and then uninstall the app)

 

so no full recovery for my machine yet. (I still have the new memory to keep trying...)

 

 

 

I have 2 red kingston (xmp 1.3) and 3 blue kingston rams (older). I have solid 1 blue kingston ram and 1 red kingston ram, the others are faulty. I saved the blue kingston rams in this way and when I tried to save the red kingstons in the same way, I was seeing a black screen when I inserted the ram into its slot after the bios screen. To solve this problem, I first installed a working red kingston ram, then took a picture of the SPD column from the RwEverything program. I turned off the computer and inserted a working blue kingston ram and a faulty red kingston ram, that's how I was able to boot. You can also try with a different ram.

[Blaaz]

On 3/9/2023 at 3:27 PM, CikoCiko said:

 

I have 2 red kingston (xmp 1.3) and 3 blue kingston rams (older). I have solid 1 blue kingston ram and 1 red kingston ram, the others are faulty. I saved the blue kingston rams in this way and when I tried to save the red kingstons in the same way, I was seeing a black screen when I inserted the ram into its slot after the bios screen. To solve this problem, I first installed a working red kingston ram, then took a picture of the SPD column from the RwEverything program. I turned off the computer and inserted a working blue kingston ram and a faulty red kingston ram, that's how I was able to boot. You can also try with a different ram.

Thanks for the follow up, I tried that combination too , I believe that is my motherboard that does not allow a faulty memories ... 

If I got another mother I would definitly try again.

 

just as an anecdotic data and for the history of the problem, the 4 banks were:

2x kingston 4 GB

1x Fury HyperX 8 GB

1x Novatech 4 GB

 

I left aside the failed ones (RIP), and continue with the new ones

maybe one day I would be able to recover them.

[SilentPrayerCG]

Hi!. Me and my friend discussed DPI in Valorant, and he decided to install Gigabyte Control Center to look up DPI settings for his Aorus Mouse. After installing it, he installed stuff that was in list of additional software, including... RGB Fussion... so he can turn off RGB lights on mouse.

He have pretty old PC, he had 2 sticks DDR3 ram 4 +4 gb.

While working with Control Center, PC is BSODed. I didn't heard from him about any BSODs for a long time, I've asked him to check bluescreenview. Error was PFN LIST CORRUPT (and erorr was on file of windows kernel NTOKERNEL). I told him, that it's maybe just random BSOD.. but after he continue working with Center, (updating installed stuff), it BSODed again.

But this time, after BSOD, PC never recovered.. I asked him to replace GPU (since he bought new one recently, and I thought maybe it's faulty or something), but it didn't helped.

So I asked him to remove RAM sticks one by one.. and.. removing one of RAM stick caused PC working again.
So it's dead RAM, we thought, it's pretty old, maybe it's time just came.... buuuuut... after that it's BSODed again. Same error.... not good.. He told me, that it's BSODing whenever he closing Control Center. We removed it from autostart and uninstalled it. I've googled, and found bunch of reports that RGB Fusion 2 causing PFN LIST CORRUPT BSODs if it closed or crashed.. But dead ram...? RAM stick is definitely dead. We checked, one working in both slots, second is not working at all, PC wont boot, just fans is running, no posts.

Surely some RGB lights driver CAN'T KILL RAM? Right??... Now I'm found this post... What the hell... And what the hell Gigabyte???

My friend went to retailer shop to buy new sticks, at least it still can be bought it shop and it's considerable cheap, but still - 1700rub for installing OFFICIAL software for mouse.

 

ps

I've read post, for those who posted about "you smoking crack?", "it's your mobo killing rams", his system was perfectly fine before he installed this c*ap from Gigabyte, so I can rule out "hit by meteorite"-kinda coincidence.

[Martyninoz]

I thought I'd add my experience of this too, to reinforce that the OP isn't 'smoking crack' or whatever put down it was.

 

I have been running a H87M-Plus board for about 10 years with a GTX760. I finally changed the card to a GTX 1080TI a couple of weeks ago. I only had the stock NVIDIA driver installed and all was good. The PSU is only 18 months old and more than sufficient to run the 1080.

 

I installed the Aorus software and it asked if I wanted RGBfusion 2.0, so I thought sure, what's the harm in some LED control. Big mistake.

 

I restarted the PC and immediately got a 'PFN_File_List_Corrupt' BSOD. Unusual as I have not had any BSODs on this machine.

 

I try to turn the PC back on and it hangs at the bios screen. The DRAM fault LED was on.

 

Eventually after testing all 4 Dimm modules, I replace the modules with a 2x1gb set and windows loads first time no issue. 

 

I uninstall the RGB fusion software - and here's the kicker - I see a momentary command prompt window with the word 'flashing'.. (too quick to read the whole thing).

 

I restart the PC and the 2 modules that were in there are now fried - DRAM fault light is back on.

 

It appears that the software writes some garbage to the SPD chip on the memory module and the motherboard is no longer able to communicate with it (no timing tables etc).

 

So all up this POS software has cost me 4x4gb HyperX DRR3 plus 2x1gb Samsung memory sticks plus several hours of fault finding.

 

Gigabyte do not respond when questioned. They are the reason why we can't have nice things.

 

 

 

[lienvoid]

I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since it was heard about this crap software bricking RAMs and SATA drives yet nothing was fixed.

 

My LGA1156 build also became a victim when I bought a Gigabyte RX5700 and installed this to play with the lights. I returned two bricked RAM kits to the store thinking I’ve got extremely unlucky with them, bought a new PSU, and found out a month later on a new Windows installation that it was RGB Fusion’s fault, because I’ve installed it again and the next day another RAM kit got bricked. I was able to save two sticks with RWEverything but two of them are now some expensive paperweight because they had non-removable write protection (how the hell did they even get bricked with that in place?!). Wasted quite a bit of money and nerves thanks to Gigabyte’s software, even though I don’t really have anything against their GPUs.

 

I moved on to an X99 Xeon rig and when I want to change something with LEDs I still boot up the old LGA1156 with the card, install and delete RGBFusion in one boot because killing relatively expensive DDR4 with this is the last thing I want.

[DesignerVisuals]

I have a old computer system, with an Asus mobo, which has worked Flawlessly for over 12 years.. Recently started experimenting with crypto mining. Installed a fairly new Gigabyte rtx 3080 in this system. Installed lolminer, MSI Afterburner. Was happily mining away for weeks.. no problems.

 

It has leds under the name GIGABYTE. I dont want leds on this system, as its going to be moved into my bedroom.

 

Installed RBG Fusion simply to turn off the LEDs.

 

Ran the program right after installing it.

 

BAMMMM!!!!! Instant Windows BSOD, the gpu fans starting spinning out of control, and yet it seemed like the system was still running, so I quickly switched off the PSU.

 

Let the system sit for about 10 minutes. Attempted to reboot. Nothing. Not even bios. Monitor showed no signal. Shut it down, disconnected the gpu and the hard drive, unplugged EVERYTHING, and took out the battery. Went to get dinner, was gone for a couple hours.

Came back, put the battery back in, and hooked up bare essentials, no HD or GPU. Attempted to boot the system (just to bios). Nothing.

 

Googled "RGB Fusion destroyed my system". Found MANY posts about this online, including this one just now.

 

Took out the 2 RAM sticks (DDR3). Put in a 4 GIG spare stick, switched on the PSU, and VIOLA!!! The system at least turns on again and I can see the BIOS. Im blown away by this.

BTW These RAM sticks dont have LEDs on them.

 

Now I just need to figure out how to boot up in Safe Mode (its been years since Ive had to do that) and quickly UNINSTALL RGB FUSION, as it is a COMPLETE PIECE OF SHIT!! Ive never seen a piece of software screw up the hardware on a system like this HORRIBLE SOFTWARE has done, and Ive been using computers since 1979.

 

Thanks and a tip of the hat to the folks that posted on this page, as I was about ready to throw away this mobo, which has been "serving" me well for over 10 years.

 

Johan

 

 

[Martyninoz]

I thought I'd come back and update what I found.

 

Quick recap:

I got a 1080ti and installed the aorus software, which also prompted me to install RGB Fusion.

I did that and straight away BSOD. Machine never turned back on - all memory sticks were bricked.

Motherboard bios was corrupted and needed to be forced to use the backup.

I put new memory in and it started straight back up.

Uninstalled FusionRGB, saw a momentary CMD screen saying 'flashing...' (too quick to catch).

BSOD. New memory sticks now dead.

 

 

So being an electronics nerd, I thought FU Fusion, and built a device to read the SPD chip on the dead memory sticks from this: https://github.com/1a2m3/SPD-Reader-Writer

 

I dumped the contents of each and found that all of the dead sticks have had the Byte 11 (0Bh) 'Medium Timebase Divisor' set to 0h (instead of 08h). This cannot ever be 0.

 

This means that the motherboard can no longer talk to the memory sticks as it does not know the correct clock speed to communicate.

The way the SPD was overwritten also fails CRC. I rewrote the SPD chip with the correction, and memory sticks are all now unbricked. 

 

Of course Gigabyte failed to reply about why their POS software is scribbling all over the memory SPD in the first place, but Kingston were kind enough to RMA one set of sticks, even though it was technically not their doing.

 

I'm blown away about how such a big manufacturer can put out software that is so devastatingly damaging to low level hardware and unrepairable for most.

 

 

 

 

 

[AMlR]

Same here,

 

32gb ruined after installing RGB Fusion 2.0. No warranty and couldn't find spd files for Team RAM so had to buy new ram, clean SSD, install fresh windows to get everything working again.

 

This even happened on the latest version of rgb fusion...

 

I will never use any Gigabyte products again.

 

Update: @Mart i tried to change the value to 08 with RWEverything and it worked! Ramtested all 4 8gb sticks and they are as good as new.

 

You sir are the greatest!

Edited August 24, 2023 by AMlR
Update

[Alumiinikarhu]

On 5/30/2023 at 3:20 PM, Martyninoz said:

I thought I'd come back and update what I found.

 

Quick recap:

I got a 1080ti and installed the aorus software, which also prompted me to install RGB Fusion.

I did that and straight away BSOD. Machine never turned back on - all memory sticks were bricked.

Motherboard bios was corrupted and needed to be forced to use the backup.

I put new memory in and it started straight back up.

Uninstalled FusionRGB, saw a momentary CMD screen saying 'flashing...' (too quick to catch).

BSOD. New memory sticks now dead.

 

 

So being an electronics nerd, I thought FU Fusion, and built a device to read the SPD chip on the dead memory sticks from this: https://github.com/1a2m3/SPD-Reader-Writer

 

I dumped the contents of each and found that all of the dead sticks have had the Byte 11 (0Bh) 'Medium Timebase Divisor' set to 0h (instead of 08h). This cannot ever be 0.

 

This means that the motherboard can no longer talk to the memory sticks as it does not know the correct clock speed to communicate.

The way the SPD was overwritten also fails CRC. I rewrote the SPD chip with the correction, and memory sticks are all now unbricked. 

 

Of course Gigabyte failed to reply about why their POS software is scribbling all over the memory SPD in the first place, but Kingston were kind enough to RMA one set of sticks, even though it was technically not their doing.

 

I'm blown away about how such a big manufacturer can put out software that is so devastatingly damaging to low level hardware and unrepairable for most.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello,

I just wanted to say that this post and the video from Alper Glory titled "Resurrecting your RAM killed by GIGABYTE RGB Fusion 2.0" just last night saved me maybe some hundreds of euros worth of PC components, time and other expenses including but not limited to two fully built PCs. One system with ASUS LGA1150 motherboard and one with MSI LGA1155 motherboard each having different generation Intel Core-i5 CPU.

 

I'm no stranger to tinkering with PCs but this time I just for the first-time ever started sweating a lot. I can go into detail later but I got used in near mint condition Gigabyte Aorus Liquid Cooler 280 for a very low cost with everything in a box. But very soon I found myself with five dead DDR3 SO-DIMM RAM sticks on my hands and I was thinking what is going wrong with these two motherboards. I tend to purchase used PC parts from recycling center and I had just went over these specific RAM sticks on three different systems and had tested it over night using MemFree86+ so I couldn't suspect them at all for PC what seemed like magic to just suddenly stop booting.

 

Anyway long story short... I managed to follow the instructions from Alper Glory by adopting his method of inserting corrupted/bricked RAM just after the UEFI firmware has loaded but before the OS has started and unbricked each of the stick. Martyninoz, your tip that each stick only needed to set the 0000-0A/0B bytes 10 and 11 (Medium Timebase (MTB) Divisor) to either 01h 08h or 01h 0Fh depending on granularity of the RAM was immersely helpful. And I did learn a lot about this SPD stuff so I guess staying up last night till 6 A.M. was worth it on some level even though... and, pardon my finnish, I had and still have a severe case of "maksimaalinen vitutus" towards this whole soup Gigabyte Aorus had cooked up.

 

There really should be a somesort of PSA about this issue and Gigabyte needs to release an update which fixes the issue. This bloody RGB software bricks RAM left and right. Also Gigabyte needs to withdraw the past versions of the software if affected by this issue. It isn't simply enough to release an update if they're still distributing the faulty version for older Windows releases.

 

I used Thaiphoon Burner and RW-Everything to unbrick the RAMs.

 

Thanks guys!

[Tozen]

On 05.08.2022 at 18:23, AlfredManner said:

Doing some research I have found that there a many suffering this issue, I am in the process of contacting gigabyte to have them run lab tests, unfortunately I've not need able to get time to try recovering these killed rams,

 

I can't believe there are guys debating that it wasn't this RGB Fusion to my OP. You expect more smarter people more tech-savvy to be on this forum. The link below shows others experiencing this issue. At the moment gigabyte are also finding it difficult to understand that their software is killing older hardware.

 

 

 

 

Same problem, installed RGB fusion, rebooted the computer - 2 RAMs are dead, installed new 16GB (Patriot), it started up fine, went to the task manager, disabled the RGB fusion process, the blue screen of death immediately appeared - reboot, RAM is dead. unfortunately, this is true, under some circumstances RGB fusion kills the RAM, or more precisely, it rewrites the SPD of the RAM, people from the Russian forum have the same problem https://www.cyberforum.ru/memory/thread3065203.html