Is my motherboard dying?!!

ThunderDave · February 22, 2017

Hello!

My PC has just started giving me headaches! I turned it on the other day, it flashed the BIOS then went into a perpetual restart cycle. I have four sticks of RAM (4x4GB), I've tested them all and found that one is dead. I have also tested all the slots and they all seem to be working! Brilliant! problem solved.... until I shut it down again. The rig currently has 2 sticks in the first 2 slots and when it is powered on I get the perpetual restart again. The only way I have found to get it to boot is to remove 1 stick and boot it up. Then if I shut it down I can successfully add the second stick and it will boot back up fine! I'm very confused!! I'm also stuck at work a lot recently so can't be bothered to spend hours diagnosing it!!

Do you fine Ladies and Gents have any clue about what is going on??! Any help would be appreciated!

Vishvas Sudarshan · February 22, 2017

If you have 4 slots, you should use slots 2 and 4 (or 1 and 3)(counted from the CPU socket) , not two consecutive slots. Try that and see if it boots.

RCruey · February 22, 2017

Do you have a graphics card? If so, try taking it out and using the on board graphics card to see if it might be a video card error.

It could be you have some bent pins somewhere, but also it could be that some of your ram sticks might be bad. But the fact that the BIOS was flashed recently doesn't help, because if it was an error with the BIOS then that will prove to be a bigger issue.

Is there anything else you can tell us that might help?

ThunderDave · February 23, 2017

Thanks for the help guys! I'm running my RAM in slots 1 and 3 and it appears to be booting OK for the moment! I think I will use this as an excuse to upgrade!