Weird RAM issue, Memtest errors not consistent

[Inspirement]

I am trying to upgrade an older computer that has been relegated to server duties to 8GB of RAM, from the 4 that I initially had installed, but I've run into issues with it being able to boot in some configurations and not in others and sometimes it can complete a whole pass of memtest without issues while in other configurations it throws out thousands of errors. I have spent the last day and a half doing tests in all manner of configurations and I have seen some patterns appear, and I'll put a screenshot of the data I collected below. I just don't know what it means and how to interpret it. I'm hoping some of you guys might have a better idea.

 

The numbers in the cells indicate which RAM stick was inserted into which slot at the time of testing. One horizontal row=one test

 

As you might be able to see, I haven't run memtest in all instances, some I just checked if it posted, and I only ran it three times on the three stick configurations so far, but I'm guessing it would throw errors on all of those.

 

The patterns I'm seeing so far are the following:

*There are no problems when using single sticks

*There are no problems when using double sticks
*When using three sticks, it throws errors and fails to boot is stick 4 is in slot A1 or A2

*When using all sticks, it fails to boot in any configurations

 

So now I wonder, what would cause this?

Could there be some settings I need to change in BIOS? I would really like to at least get three sticks working without any problem.

 

The system is an Asus M3A78 motherboard with a AMD Phenom II x4 965 CPU. The RAM is 4x2GB Hynix DDR2 800MHz

[GreezyJeezy]

Does your motherboard support 8gb? Looked it up and 8gb is the max your board can have

[GreezyJeezy]

Humm did you try ram in every ram slot? Maybe a slot is dead 

[Inspirement]

9 minutes ago, GreezyJeezy said:

Does your motherboard support 8gb? Looked it up and 8gb is the max your board can have

Yes, the manual says 8GB is maximum supported so it should be able to. 

7 minutes ago, GreezyJeezy said:

Humm did you try ram in every ram slot? Maybe a slot is dead 

It works perfectly with my 4x1GB kit I've used prior to this, so yes, all slots are fine.You can see that I've also tried single each stick in each slot and there were no errors.

 

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I cleared CMOS before testing so all BIOS settings are at their default values.

[Hackentosher]

try running just 1 dimm at a time and run memtest. I did this when I was having issues and found the dead stick pretty quickly. If you're getting any errors with memtest, or simply not booting, it's probably a stick or two that's bad.

[Inspirement]

4 minutes ago, Hackentosher said:

try running just 1 dimm at a time and run memtest. I did this when I was having issues and found the dead stick pretty quickly. If you're getting any errors with memtest, or simply not booting, it's probably a stick or two that's bad.

I dud run one at a time, and as my table above indicates, there were no errors then. Only with three sticks or more I got errors or no boot at all, and all are working perfectly with other RAM.

[Hackentosher]

Just now, Inspirement said:

I dud run one at a time, and as my table above indicates, there were no errors then. Only with three sticks or more I got errors or no boot at all, and all are working perfectly with other RAM.

Maybe @GreezyJeezy is right about a dead slot. Have you tried each individual slot? 

[Inspirement]

1 minute ago, Hackentosher said:

Maybe @GreezyJeezy is right about a dead slot. Have you tried each individual slot? 

 

31 minutes ago, Inspirement said:

It works perfectly with my 4x1GB kit I've used prior to this, so yes, all slots are fine.You can see that I've also tried single each stick in each slot and there were no errors.

 

[Hackentosher]

1 minute ago, Inspirement said:

 

 

You reset the CMOS so it's not a weird thing there, can you flash an updated BIOS to the board? Is there a backup BIOS chip on the board that you can switch to? Also as proven by my first rig, it is possible for things to just die sometimes, often in the process of an upgrade. It doesn't cost anything to double check.

[Inspirement]

Just now, Hackentosher said:

You reset the CMOS so it's not a weird thing there, can you flash an updated BIOS to the board? Is there a backup BIOS chip on the board that you can switch to?

I don't think there's a backup BIOS, and I can't update the BIOS anyway, because it requires the BIOS being flashed from a CD or a USB drive that's smaller than 8GB, neither of which I own, or being installed from Windows, through software, but I'm running FreeNAS on this machine. Anyway, the BIOS haven't been updated since 2010 and I'm sure I've done a BIOS update on this machine since then.

[Hackentosher]

1 minute ago, Inspirement said:

I don't think there's a backup BIOS, and I can't update the BIOS anyway, because it requires the BIOS being flashed from a CD or a USB drive that's smaller than 8GB, neither of which I own, or being installed from Windows, through software, but I'm running FreeNAS on this machine. Anyway, the BIOS haven't been updated since 2010 and I'm sure I've done a BIOS update on this machine since then.

That's weird that it needs something smaller than 8gb. Like really weird. If you can't borrow one from a friend, you might be able to make a 4-8gb partition on a flash drive for your BIOS update.

[GreezyJeezy]

11 minutes ago, Inspirement said:

 

 

But try to put 1 dim in the first slot see if it boots, then do it in the next slot and so on,  so you only have 1 stick of ram in but you test it in every slot, unless you are saying you did that already then ignore this 

[Inspirement]

Yes, I did that. Once with every stick even, and same result every time. Booted fine and completed one pass of memtest without errors.