Ram or motherboard problem?

My computer (desktop) has 4 slots for ram. Each slot is occupied by a 2gb stick of ram (8gbs total). Yesterday i got errors when i turned it on. First it said that the overclocking had failed (weird) but i reverted it to defaults, then there were windows errors saying files were corrupt and there was a serious hardware problem. Well i removed 3 sticks of ram out of chance and it booted fine. i added sticks one at a time and it was ok with 2, was slow with 3 and errored with all 4.

I ram mem test with all 4 and it gave 300,000 errors before i stopped it...i removed stick 4 and ran it with the 3 and it ran only giving 3 errors. I then decided i should run them one at at time which i did all in the first slot which they all ran fine in memtest. So i was thinking it could be the slots were bad so i tried a stick in each of the slots and it still reports no errors, yet with all 4 it does.

Also of interest, no settings were changed or altered prior to the problems.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

tough one... flash the cmos ?

 

You could quite possibly have a bad memory slot or two. How old is the motherboard in question, its model number, and does it have the latest BIOS?

-J.B.

 

That 800Mhz overclock will do it. The overclock must have pushed the memory frequency too high, and slowly and steady one memory chip became corrupt. Than everything just went downhill.
It sounds like one or two of your memory cards have become corrupt. Send the memory back to the manufacturer for replacement, and that will solve the memory problem. As far as the motherboard goes, i dont think that the problem is the motherboard. Corrupt memory will act funny when something is wrong. Sometimes it works fine and sometimes it does not.
Replace the memory and than see if that fixes the problem. If the problem still arises with working memory, than the motherboard also needs to be repaired/replaced.

Try the memory in just the orange slots, and than try two sticks in just the yellow slots and see if that makes a difference. The yellow and orange slots are on different memory channels. If one channel works, you can still make use of the motherboard.

K-TRON

 

If you don't have any problem with any of the sticks individually i don't think you should listen to K-TRON.

There is a common problem with almost all dekstop motherboards when using 3-4 sticks.
And that is that the chipset(MCH) is very sensitive when occupating each slot.
So the motherboard want all the 4 sticks to be listed as compatible with the motherboard to really get it working. Otherwise you'll have errors no mather what.

The most common thing to get rid of this problem is to get 4 sticks that you know is listed as compatible with the motherboard (listed compatibility with 4sticks at the same time, not listed as with 2sticks or 1).

Other things are that you could up the DDR2 and/or MCH-voltage a snap or three to see if you can get rid of the problem, the MCH gets too much load when using 4 sticks with some mb's, so that's why you wanna try up the MCH-voltage, so it can handle it. Just make sure you don't have any heat issues.

If either of those won't work the mb just won't let you use 4 sticks of ram. Some mb's are more crucial than others when having 4sticks and most mb makers won't even let you RMA the mb when it wont work with all 4 populated as they'll tell you that your memory isn't compatible with the mb.

And as you noticed it works fine with 1 or 2 sticks, but with 3 it starts to come minor errors (and that's why the MCH gets too much to do) so when you pop in the 4th stick the MCH is gonna get "overloaded" and show you very many errors.

Sorry for my bad english, but this is something i know for sure!

 

Michael has a good point. It is a MoBo problem.

 

upping the ram voltage is a good idea, how was it when it was o/c ?

 

the ram requires 2.1 volts stock so thats what it was at. it was only overclocked to 840mhz (800 stock) so that shouldn't be too big of a deal. The fsb was 1680 where the board supports up to 1600mhz chips so again that shouldnt be a problem. Idk, its weird, it works with 2x2 but not 4x2 and it doesnt matter which sticks, they all come fine. I think its something with the mobo...but i dunno how good of a response i will get from biostar on the support side.

 

All DDR2 sticks goes through JEDEC. JEDEC is profiles in the ram-sticks that uses 1.8volts.
The 2.1volts profile you're reffering too is called EPP and is only used when overclocking the memory!

I'm saying all DDR2 has 1.8v profiles that you can use also.

 

What brand of ram and mobo are you using. It isn't crucial ballistix tracers and an asus P5K by any chance?

 

Right, but it needs 2.1 volts to hit the lower latencies. It is marked on the sticker of the ram that it requires 2.1 volts.

No it is ocz sli 4 sticks of this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227269

And the motherboard is http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138122

Im going to test the ram individually some more when i get a chance but i think its the motherboard.

 

Yeah sure!
But have in mind that you can test with the 1.8v settings too, just to check stability with 4 sticks. So try it out to see if it gets better with the 1.8v (JEDEC-profile).

It only needs the 2.1volts togheter when used with the EPP(the lower latencies or higher clocks than the ddr2-standard) otherwise they're just usual 1.8v DDR2-memory with the "approved for 1066Mhz or 4-4-4-12 latencies" above the standard, they are primary for 1.8v use as all DDR2-memories. That's why all DDR2-memories will work with any DDR2-based boards that cannot regulate the DDR2 voltage above 1.8v. Otherwise there would only be nvidia-based boards working with those memories as nvidiaboards can read the EPP straight of the sticks
Trust me, i've written alot about DDR/DDR2 memory and how it/they work! (a whole FAQ on swedish though)

 

i tested the ram in both modes. i think its the motherboard not the ram.

 

Yeah, that's what i'm saying too IT's the MB that can't handle it!
Was just giving you a suggestion that might work if you're lucky

But this problem is very common with all brands of motherboards, so don't think it's only related to your Biostar MB.

 

btw how long was it booting normally in the o/c setup?

 

about three months (basically a day or 2 after i finished building it.)

 

update - biostar support sucks and i will never buy from them again.

however, as a temporary fix, upping the ram voltage to 2.2volts let it boot proper with a bsod after 10 minutes of use and upping it to 2.3 volts has been solid all day. I dont know how long it will last, but i will just buy a new board if it causes problems again...maybe a good brand this time.

 

It feels like you've been ignoring what i've written!
As i said in my first post in this thread

And btw, 2.3v will work sure, but they'll die on you pretty soon. The sticks that is.


And as i also said in my last post in this thread, it's not related to your Biostar MB, it's related to all kinds of DDR2 MB's. So getting a new MB with another brand will most definately not solve your problem if you end up with 4sticks that aren't 100% tested with just that motherboard.


Just trying to help you, just because i'm new on this forum doesn't mean i'm new to hardware