Undiagnosable RAM fault

[xBlizzDevious]

My computer started behaving strange the other day. It worked sometimes, then wouldn't boot the next time, etc. So I reformatted but it was the same. So I guessed it must be a hardware fault and ran Memtest86.

 

Sure enough, I got errors showing up so I took all but one stick out and re-ran the tests. I did this for each stick and got no errors.

 

So I took a stick and tried it in all slots... and I got no errors. Thinking I'd lost my mind, I tried all four sticks again and the errors showed again.

 

So then I tried two sticks at a time in each pair, then one in each pair both ways round and absolutely no errors. I'm now out of ideas.

 

As far as I can tell, each stick is 100%,

Each slot is 100%.

Any pair of slots is 100%.

All 4 slots and something's very broken.

 

 

Hardware:

Intel Core i7 4790k @ stock

4 sticks of Corsair Vengeance LP 1600MHz, CL9 (XMP enabled for all tests)

MSI Z97 Gaming 3

Asus 980Ti STRIX

EVGA G2 650W (might be 750W; can't remember).

[emosun]

that would lead me to believe the motherboard is having a problem using all 4 sticks

although , memtest is sort of a crappy way to test ram. Yes , sounds counter intuitive. But I've seen dozens of people with bad memory stick pass mem tests easy peasy.

put a load on the system that normally cause the errors with only two sticks in , then try the other two. If one set triggers it then narrow it down to one stick stick in that set.

[xBlizzDevious]

Just now, emosun said:

that would lead me to believe the motherboard is having a problem using all 4 sticks

although , memtest is sort of a crappy way to test ram. Yes , sounds counter intuitive. But I've seen dozens of people with bad memory stick pass mem tests easy peasy.

put a load on the system that normally cause the errors with only two sticks in , then try the other two. If one set triggers it then narrow it down to one stick stick in that set.

The "errors" were that the computer sometimes wouldn't boot but sometimes would. Oh, and installing the Nvidia driver was the last thing that wouldn't work. I'll do another reformat but with two sticks and see if I can set everything up right that way - won't happen until tomorrow though.

 

Thanks for responding so quick!

[xBlizzDevious]

Ok quick update:

I'm currently running only two sticks of RAM and have only had the computer not want to boot once. That time I had specifically held the power button in for four seconds to go to the BIOS. I get "AB" appearing on the bottom right corner of the screen. This obviously isn't optimal but it is working.

Shall I install all four sticks again and see if I get issues? If I do, would you think it's the motherboard or CPU at fault?


Weirdly, I've come across a new issue today and have no idea what I've done different. My audio goes through HDMI to my secondary monitor via my AVR. Normally, this works perfectly but more and more often lately, it's stopped playing the sound if it's been quiet for any amount of time. Switching the AVR to another channel, then off, then back on and back to the correct channel was the easiest way to fix it (restarting the computer was the other). But yesterday it wouldn't play any sound after trying either fix and having just got back from work, switched everything on for the first time today, I'm getting no sound again. According to Windows, it's sending audio but the AVR disagrees. I'd also note that usually my secondary monitor will still appear as if connected even when the AVR channel has been changed. Since I reformatted the other day, it's not done that and has instead moved all windows to the main display and it flickers. It even does it when shutting down so when I switch the computer back on, all of my windows move to the wrong screen again. I've always left Windows 10 to install the iGPU driver (which my secondary display is plugged into) so it shouldn't be any different. Any ideas?