RAM caused weird behavior on PC after a year of working fine.

Thunder2505 · January 25

I recently had an issue where my PC stopped booting, with only the CPU led on. After trying basic trouble shooting, I decided to swap my Ryzen 5 5600 with my older Ryzen 5 1600. The PC booted fine, so I sent my CPU in for warranty, as everything worked fine with the older chip, but not with the new one(That used to work fine for a year). The CPU ended up being fine, so I got it back, but the issue still persisted. I then tried testing components using some donor parts from a friend's PC, and the PC booted fine with his RAM, and his PC booted fine with my RAM (Like with my 1600). We both have the same RAM speeds, cas latency and motherboard. The only difference is the CPU. I'm still confused as to how this is possible. I just felt like I had to post about it.

RONOTHAN## · January 25

24 minutes ago, Thunder2505 said:

We both have the same RAM speeds, cas latency

I will want to point out that just because these are the same does not mean that the actual RAM is the same, it's to the point where kits like 3200 CL16 can be quite different from one to the next. I'd take a guess that's why his kit works in your system and yours doesn't.

As for why it was working just fine before everything stopped working, I have absolutely no clue, that part has no real explanation. Only thing I can think of is some sort of BIOS glitch/corruption and doing a BIOS update might help, but that's about the only thing I can think of.

Kisai · January 25

6 hours ago, Thunder2505 said:

I recently had an issue where my PC stopped booting, with only the CPU led on. After trying basic trouble shooting, I decided to swap my Ryzen 5 5600 with my older Ryzen 5 1600. The PC booted fine, so I sent my CPU in for warranty, as everything worked fine with the older chip, but not with the new one(That used to work fine for a year). The CPU ended up being fine, so I got it back, but the issue still persisted. I then tried testing components using some donor parts from a friend's PC, and the PC booted fine with his RAM, and his PC booted fine with my RAM (Like with my 1600). We both have the same RAM speeds, cas latency and motherboard. The only difference is the CPU. I'm still confused as to how this is possible. I just felt like I had to post about it.

I've seen this before, and your only real solution there is to pull all the RAM and replace it with a matched set, which is basically what you did when you swapped RAM with the friend. His set might be a matched set. Your ram working in his system might simply be because he might not have XMP/DOCP turned on.

I'd be willing to bet that the RAM probably works as a single stick or two sticks in dual channel mode, but as soon as you put in 4 sticks the problem comes back. When you have 4 sticks, you sometimes can't get XMP to work, even if it's a compatible set.

RAM can also age and self-destruct, but in those cases it would simply not work past the boot phase, usually the OS would BSOD before it shows the desktop.

MageTank · January 25

6 hours ago, Thunder2505 said:

I recently had an issue where my PC stopped booting, with only the CPU led on. After trying basic trouble shooting, I decided to swap my Ryzen 5 5600 with my older Ryzen 5 1600. The PC booted fine, so I sent my CPU in for warranty, as everything worked fine with the older chip, but not with the new one(That used to work fine for a year). The CPU ended up being fine, so I got it back, but the issue still persisted. I then tried testing components using some donor parts from a friend's PC, and the PC booted fine with his RAM, and his PC booted fine with my RAM (Like with my 1600). We both have the same RAM speeds, cas latency and motherboard. The only difference is the CPU. I'm still confused as to how this is possible. I just felt like I had to post about it.

Does the PC boot fine with a single DIMM installed? If so, install a single DIMM, load XMP to make sure it posts, manually dial in the primary and secondary timings, leave tertiary on auto and disable MCR so that it manually trains the tertiary timings again. See if that still boots. If so, install the second DIMM and see if it will successfully train in dual channel. If this fails, manually dial in 900mv VDDP and try again.

Like @RONOTHAN## said, two identical kits from the same manufacturer can still have different ICs from different memory vendors. Our lab ordered several thousand G Skill kits over the years and it was basically like playing the lottery. Even if we ended up with multiple kits from Hynix, some would be CJR, DJR, AFR, MFR, etc. All of these behave differently from one another.