Boot issues and RAM not detected

bmorris2284 · November 21, 2016

Here are my specs:

CPU: I7 5820k OC to 4.0Ghz

Motherboard: old - MSI X99A Gaming 7 NEW - ASUS Strix X99

RAM: Corsair LPX DDR4 4 X 4GB 2666Mhz

GPU: Gigabyte GTX 980Ti G1 Gaming SLI

PSU: Corsair Hxi 1200w

Hard Drives: Corsair MX100 256GB and OCZ Vector 180 480GB

Full custom loop with EK products

A few days ago my PC wouldn’t boot. I had left it unpluged for a month since I was out of the country. When I got home, it booted fine but I had no internet and had to reinstall the LAN driver. When I restarted, the computer wouldn’t boot. At first it was showing a late CPU initialization error according to the debug code. After showing the debug code 67, the computer would shut down and restart endlessly. I removed all the ram, leaving DIMM slot 7, and the computer would then hang on debug code 67. I tried clearing CMOS and attempted to boot on each BIOS with the same results. An interesting note, during boot, both BIOS lights were on. A few months ago, the PC got hung during boot like this but I was able to fix it by installing RAM only in DIMM 7 and resetting BIOS settings. I reinstalled all the RAM and it booted. This fix doesn’t work now. Believing my problem was the RAM, I tested it in another PC and it booted fine. I figured this had to be the motherboard.

I have read of problems like this with this particular board so I decided I would buy a new board. I ordered an ASUS Strix X99 board and installed everything. The first attempt to boot, it got hung at debug code 76, pch dxe initialization. I exchanged ram to some Corsair Dominator DDR4 4 X 4GB 3000Mhz that my brother had and the computer slowly booted into BIOS. However, BIOS did not detect the ram in DIMM slots A1 and B1. Again, in another computer it recognized all sticks. All RAM was properly seated and I checked both motherboards for bent pins in the CPU socket but they looked fine. All power cables were properly connected. Could this be a CPU problem or another bad motherboard? I’m really at a loss now. Any help would be appreciated.

pwn_intended · November 21, 2016

Sounds like it may be a CPU issue. If you can test it in a KNOWN good system, or you have access to another 2011-3 CPU...that would be ideal. I had a similar issue with a friend's machine where the error codes were useless, and we swapped out the mobo and ram first, only to find it was the CPU all along.