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Issue With >8GB Memory

UL_42L
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Problem solved! The limit for my memory speed is 533/1066 MHz and the system did not automatically underclock it! Once I lowered the clock rate, it worked perfectly! Thank you very much for your help, @cayphed!

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EDIT: PROGRESS! I believe I have UNDERclocked the RAM (200 MHz / DDR2-400) and it seems to work with no errors so far. Does this mean I need to get heat spreaders? Or perhaps does it mean the motherboard can't supply that much power to all 4 RAM sticks? Do I just need to go with the slower speeds?

 

I have had a computer with a Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H motherboard and an AMD Phenom II X4 920 processor for a while now. I recently upgraded it to 16 GB of RAM (for server purposes) and used it mostly without issue for about two days. However, when I noticed something wasn't working correctly, I tried a reinstall of the server OS (which I had to restart 3 times due to hanging and errors). A friend of mine suggested I run Memtest86+, and sure enough, it found thousands of errors within a period of only a few minutes. Discovering that, I unplugged the system and tested each RAM stick, only to find each working perfectly on its own. Then, I tested each slot with working RAM, and also found each one to work. It also seemed to work with 8 GB of ram in either the first 2 or last 2 slots, but 12 or 16 GB both fail. I did notice that 16 GB fails instantly, while 12 runs for about 20 seconds before giving errors. The motherboard is meant to support 16 GB of RAM, so what went wrong?

 

Additional note: I just remembered that Memtest86+ will hang if I try to close it with escape using 16 GB of ram, but not with 12 or less.

Thy hath sinneth, and in thy life thou hast fallen to an unholy, unspeakable level of humanity. Thou hast given into your basest needs. And suffered many years under thine Satan-box. However, if thine be willing, as thy hast show yourself to be, thy can ascendeth into thy glorious fold of the glorious church. Go well, my brother, may your temps be low and your frames high. ~ MrDynamicMan

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2 minutes ago, cayphed said:

What RAM modules are these?

Nameless modules that were given to me, but tested to work (individually). I also just tried to run some more tests and, rather than booting at all, the system is starting to give me 3 long beeps (a warning for a RAM issue).

Thy hath sinneth, and in thy life thou hast fallen to an unholy, unspeakable level of humanity. Thou hast given into your basest needs. And suffered many years under thine Satan-box. However, if thine be willing, as thy hast show yourself to be, thy can ascendeth into thy glorious fold of the glorious church. Go well, my brother, may your temps be low and your frames high. ~ MrDynamicMan

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DDR2 RAM? Do you have speeds and latency's (perhaps on a sticker or the info memtest gave for each stick)???

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It's doing all kinds of weird junk now. The 3 beeps problem stopped, but instead gave way to a boot loop which gave a MAIN BIOS CHECKSUM ERROR, then it did that a couple times and started to boot normally. I think it might be the power supply, but I'm going to have to use the one in my main system to check. I'll be back soon (hopefully).

 

 

Thy hath sinneth, and in thy life thou hast fallen to an unholy, unspeakable level of humanity. Thou hast given into your basest needs. And suffered many years under thine Satan-box. However, if thine be willing, as thy hast show yourself to be, thy can ascendeth into thy glorious fold of the glorious church. Go well, my brother, may your temps be low and your frames high. ~ MrDynamicMan

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7 minutes ago, UL_42L said:

It's doing all kinds of weird junk now. The 3 beeps problem stopped, but instead gave way to a boot loop which gave a MAIN BIOS CHECKSUM ERROR, then it did that a couple times and started to boot normally. I think it might be the power supply, but I'm going to have to use the one in my main system to check. I'll be back soon (hopefully).

 

That sounds like a currupted BIOS, not power or memory, if it's booting cleanly than the dual BIOS setup worked.

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Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion (after a few hours of pain and frustration) that I have either a configuration error, a bad BIOS (could it be the CMOS battery is old?) or, the possibilities that horrify me deeply, a faulty motherboard or a CPU that won't take the extra RAM (if that's even related to it).

 

Anyway, it is DDR2. Its labeled and detected as 800 (1600) MHz. 

Thy hath sinneth, and in thy life thou hast fallen to an unholy, unspeakable level of humanity. Thou hast given into your basest needs. And suffered many years under thine Satan-box. However, if thine be willing, as thy hast show yourself to be, thy can ascendeth into thy glorious fold of the glorious church. Go well, my brother, may your temps be low and your frames high. ~ MrDynamicMan

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Today is the first time I've heard of DDR2 reaching 16GB (The most I've ran is 8GB) so I'm surprised to see it, but one thing I've learnt when building scrap machines for various purposes is when grabbing random sticks of RAM and hopping they'll work, I always found that some are "high density" modules for AMD only, while the rest are "low density" which have a tendency to work everywhere else, I had the unfortunate day of solid blue screens before I figured these differences out and that more importantly, the two do not like working with one another.

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8 hours ago, cayphed said:

Today is the first time I've heard of DDR2 reaching 16GB (The most I've ran is 8GB) so I'm surprised to see it, but one thing I've learnt when building scrap machines for various purposes is when grabbing random sticks of RAM and hopping they'll work, I always found that some are "high density" modules for AMD only, while the rest are "low density" which have a tendency to work everywhere else, I had the unfortunate day of solid blue screens before I figured these differences out and that more importantly, the two do not like working with one another.

I was sure they would work, as it is an AMD machine, but it still doesn't really explain much. It vaguely occurred to me that maybe Memtest wasn't able to test that much, but it was pointed out to me that it can handle more than its name suggests. So, I'm really confused and honestly a bit down about this. I can't see what's stopping it from working. But I did make a mistake: Memtest says the RAM is 400 MHz, which doubles to 800, rather than it being 800 that doubles to 1600. I'm not sure what the label was.

Thy hath sinneth, and in thy life thou hast fallen to an unholy, unspeakable level of humanity. Thou hast given into your basest needs. And suffered many years under thine Satan-box. However, if thine be willing, as thy hast show yourself to be, thy can ascendeth into thy glorious fold of the glorious church. Go well, my brother, may your temps be low and your frames high. ~ MrDynamicMan

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9 hours ago, cayphed said:

Today is the first time I've heard of DDR2 reaching 16GB (The most I've ran is 8GB) so I'm surprised to see it, but one thing I've learnt when building scrap machines for various purposes is when grabbing random sticks of RAM and hopping they'll work, I always found that some are "high density" modules for AMD only, while the rest are "low density" which have a tendency to work everywhere else, I had the unfortunate day of solid blue screens before I figured these differences out and that more importantly, the two do not like working with one another.

  The number of controllers: 1
Memory channels: 2
Channel width (bits): 72
Supported memory: DDR2-1066
DIMMs per channel: 2
Maximum memory bandwidth (GB/s): 17.1

 

These are the memory controller specifications for my processor. It has 2 channels with two DIMMs per channel, so I don't see why it wouldn't work.

 

Edit: Here's the link to the manual for this motherboard, you can see the configuration options available to me on page 35 and onward. I already set the memory to ganged mode. http://download.gigabyte.ru/manual/motherboard_manual_ga-ma790gp-ud4h_e.pdf

Edited by UL_42L
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Thy hath sinneth, and in thy life thou hast fallen to an unholy, unspeakable level of humanity. Thou hast given into your basest needs. And suffered many years under thine Satan-box. However, if thine be willing, as thy hast show yourself to be, thy can ascendeth into thy glorious fold of the glorious church. Go well, my brother, may your temps be low and your frames high. ~ MrDynamicMan

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Problem solved! The limit for my memory speed is 533/1066 MHz and the system did not automatically underclock it! Once I lowered the clock rate, it worked perfectly! Thank you very much for your help, @cayphed!

Thy hath sinneth, and in thy life thou hast fallen to an unholy, unspeakable level of humanity. Thou hast given into your basest needs. And suffered many years under thine Satan-box. However, if thine be willing, as thy hast show yourself to be, thy can ascendeth into thy glorious fold of the glorious church. Go well, my brother, may your temps be low and your frames high. ~ MrDynamicMan

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That's great to hear, sorry I've been quiet but I am home with the flu....

I'll keep underclocking in mind.

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