PC Won't boot using XMP.

[DrZZZZZ]

Hi All,

 

I have the following hardware:

 

Gigabyte X670 AORUS ELITE AX AM5 ATX Motherboard

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core AM5 4.70 GHz Unlocked CPU Processor

G.Skill Trident Z5 32GB (2x 16GB) DDR5 6000MHz CL36 Memory

 

I have had issues since I got it where the pc boots fine, shuts down fine, and starts from a shut down fine. But takes a LONG time to reboot, and often when it reboots it comes up with overclocking failed. Then you go into bios, don't change any settings and it comes back. Lately this has gotten even worse to the point that it actually crashes and I have to power cycle the pc several times to even get it to post. When it doesn't post the dram light is on the motherboard, which is usually on until it posts. Once it boots into windows, i have no issues. Until tonight where the pc fully crashed for the first time, no blue screen and wouldn't post.

 

Troubleshooting:

Tried all major versions of Bios as well as the newest version, none appear to affect the issue at all.

Tried upping the voltage of the memory to see if it was a stability issue, no dice.

Tried undeclocking the ram to 5600 or 5200, and no change to the issue.

Tried all variations of settings that I have found online, no change.

Tried starting with one ram stick at a time, moving their slots (currently in the A2-B2 slots as suggested by manufacturer).

 

 

The only thing that works is turning off xmp completely (meaning running at a sluggish 4800mhz). However when rebooting the same initial issue arises where I have to hard power off my pc then on again after a reboot to get it back up and working.

 

Anyone got any ideas or additional steps of troubleshooting that I could try?

[Dedayog]

Is there an EXPO version of the RAM? That should work better with AM5, as G.Skill is on the QVL list.

[DrZZZZZ]

5 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Is there an EXPO version of the RAM? That should work better with AM5, as G.Skill is on the QVL list.

I have tried Enabling EXPO, same issue. Also, updated the main post: My pc is still having the issue where I reboot to a black screen. Have to power off manually, then power on and it comes back. Even with XMP disabled  logging a case with gigabyte now also. But can't figure this out.

[DoctorNick]

1 minute ago, DrZZZZZ said:

I have tried Enabling EXPO, same issue. Also, updated the main post: My pc is still having the issue where I reboot to a black screen. Have to power off manually, then power on and it comes back. Even with XMP disabled  logging a case with gigabyte now also. But can't figure this out.

So ram isn't working even on auto settings (default) on 4800mhz, witch everything set to auto? If that's the case, you got a bad memory stick most likely.

[DrZZZZZ]

Just now, DoctorNick said:

So ram isn't working even on auto settings (default) on 4800mhz, witch everything set to auto? If that's the case, you got a bad memory stick most likely.

But when I'm in windows, and it is booted. I can play games etc no problem. Wouldn't it be crashing more often if it was bad memory? I was leaning towards a motherboard issue :S

[DoctorNick]

4 minutes ago, DrZZZZZ said:

But when I'm in windows, and it is booted. I can play games etc no problem. Wouldn't it be crashing more often if it was bad memory? I was leaning towards a motherboard issue :S

Not necessarily. I would try another kit first. Ram kit is most likely to be the cause. I can't rule out that a bent pin in the CPU socket could do the same thing.

[DrZZZZZ]

2 minutes ago, DoctorNick said:

Not necessarily. I would try another kit first. Ram kit is most likely to be the cause. I can't rule out that a bent pin in the CPU socket could do the same thing.

Wouldn't the CPU error light be on the motherboard then rather than the dram light?

 

Unfortunately I have no other PCs with DDR5 ram to test  Would have to buy some ram to check if it boots and functions normally first

[DoctorNick]

2 minutes ago, DrZZZZZ said:

Wouldn't the CPU error light be on the motherboard then rather than the dram light?

Depends, if it affects the area which controls the memory controller it could be lighting up in memory and then you could also say it's memory related.

I actually tried something similar along time ago. I managed to fry a memory controller on a i7-875K, from overclocking, resulting in all the pins burning to the cpu socket. CPU was still able to run ram at stock speeds 1333/1600mhz, but anything over wouldn't work. 

[RONOTHAN##]

Have you tried manually entering the XMP parameters and trying again? Gigabyte's XMP on their AM5 boards IIRC is broken, with manually entering in the frequency and timing while leaving XMP disabled usually fixing the issue. 

[DrZZZZZ]

Well the issue now is that even without the settings I am experiencing the shutdown issue. So manually setting the frequency and timing may not change anything. But I'll give it a try.

 

Also Ran Memtest overnight with no errors. Not sure memory is the issue here, could it be motherboard? Was thinking of buying a different brand of memory and seeing how that goes, but now i'm not sure if would make a difference...

[DrZZZZZ]

Tried manually overclocking to the voltage/latency/frequency specified. But same thing happened. Booted fine, totally stable. Then upon restart it wouldn't post. Had to power off many times, and then have 1 stick in at a time to get it to post where i could reset to defaults and disable XMP in bios. Rolled back bios to earlier, same issue.

 

At this point pretty much have to buy new RAM just to test if it is RAM. If issue happens with another brand of RAM that says it is made for AMD. Then It has the be motherboard/memory controller. Then it gets messy

 

 

Just sucks that it was working fine, just with a really really long reboot until I updated the bios (trying to fix the long reboot issue). But going back to the same version I had, this issue is still there.

[DrZZZZZ]

So update to this one: Basically when I bought my memory, I looked up best Memory for AM5 across several different sites, all of them leaned towards the RAM that I purchased. The site I bought from, the gskill webpage etc all said AMD/INTEL compatible.

 

However now when I look up my RAM it says Made for INTEL only. Same with the site where I bought the RAM originally. Now there is an EXPO AMD version of the same RAM that is separate. Wonder if there was some kind of microcode update for the cpu that caused this RAM to no longer be compatible (after working for 5-6 months with no issues other than slow reboots).

 

I ordered 5600MHz definitely made for AMD EXPO Corsair Vengence RAM and haven't had an issue since. So this was definitely the RAM, and not faulty RAM just incompatible RAM, after working fine for 5-6 months...