8700k no longer boots with 2 sticks of ram.....MB on the way out?

HeadRusch

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 8, 2007
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I'll keep it simple, I've run a 8700k at stock for a few years now (whenever they came out, so what, 2017ish? 2016?)....so it puttered along at one core hitting 4.6 and the others hitting 4.3 or whatever. I had an overclock on it and a mild overvolt but then backed it off when I realized it wasn't doing much of anything for my day to day.
I was however running some PC4000 ram in it. 2 8gig sticks of Gskill that was pretty expensive at the time. XMP wouldn't be stable unless I manually added volts to the RAM (1.4 or 1.5 was default, I htink the sticks needed 1.6 to be happy but I never messed with it, left them in AUTO volt).

Long story short suddenly today the machine locked up on windows...no blue screen, just froze to desktop. I rebooted, it came back, froze again. I rebooted...and here is where the fun began.

It would cycle on, start the bootup and within 2-4 seconds just shut down again. I could barely read the codes flashing on the gigabyte Aorus Gaming 5 motherboard its all plugged into. So I did what anyone would do, I swore to the computer gods. Then I unplugged everything trying to get it to at least post or not reset within 2-4 seconds.

Pulling 1 of the 2 sticks of ram did it. I got into post, reset the MB to factory defaults, and with 8 gigs I'm running comfortably as I type this. But now I'm terrified :)

PS: I tried a second power supply I had handy, it exhibited the same problems....so I said "Well its not the PS"......

Any thoughts on this one? Could a ram stick just...well..go bad? Never had that happen.

YES, I did swap the single stick of RAM out and it seems not to like that second stick that much...but I'm going to re-try that single stick in the other available slots just to see if its a slot thing or a stick thing. The cooler blocks the first slot so I've had them in slots 2 and 4.

I was tempted to just get 16 (no need for 32gb in my world) of 3200 ram and see if it will take that reliably? I don't believe it has anything to do with the CPU, it's behaving just fine.....decent cooler on it, etc.....and i've never tried to force it to run at 4.7 or 5.0ghz, etc.....

Seems to be RAM related. Or MB related. Thoughts before I start throwing money at new/old MB's that can take this chip socket or spending the $80 or so on some 3200 ram?

Thanks!
 
if you havent, reset everything to stock speeds, including turning of xmp and setting ram to 2133/2333/2666 or whatever the default is. also test and/or replace the cmos battery, seen dying ones cause all sorts of rando errors.
 
I had something similar happen. It turned out to be a janky i5 CPU. I swapped mb and memory after trying all the usual.. finally tried another CPU and then both sticks worked. Put bad cpu in whatever mb (tried H77,Z77,Z87)... only detected 1 stick. Thought it was weird.
 
Hadn't thought of a failing CMOS battery, I do have plenty of those lying around, will try that since BIOS is at stock anyhow (due to the above-mentioned terror). Did reset BIOS to "Optimized Defaults", the only option on my Gigabyte that dumps you into 'default' mode, no XMP no overclocking or tweaking....etc. I'm going to start slowly plugging stuff back in and see if I can isolate it to either that one stick of ram or possibly that 1
RAM slot (?). The plot thicks.

Thanks for the replies.
 
It sounds like you've got a bad module.
Your right on track in eliminating the module vs the slot being the cause. If you can isolate the bad module, sending the set in for RMA is the easiest fix by far. If its a bad slot it isn't the end of the world (if your mb doesn't act stupid when the primary slots aren't occupied). You should still be able to run your 4000 at like 3200 to 3600 with low to stock timings (xmp probably wont work unless your running them in the primary slots). Its up to you as far as how you want to manually set them up. It shouldn't effect performance any except for benchmarks.
GL!
 
My report: "FAAARRRGIN RAM!" Note: it's not the MB slots, its the stick itself gave up the ghost (guessing PCB/controller somehow gave up the ghost).

Working Single stick works fine in any slot I can reach.

2nd (bad) stick caused no boot, then caused windows boot fail in second slot. Decided tossing it across the room was better than trying it in the 3rd slot.

Ok so, new one for me after 30 years......ram sticks go bad. Hmmmm. So there we go. NOTE: This stuff is easily 5 years old so, don't think there's any RMA Option....its G.Skill Trident Z F4-4000C 8gb modules x2. Moving on....
 
My report: "FAAARRRGIN RAM!" Note: it's not the MB slots, its the stick itself gave up the ghost (guessing PCB/controller somehow gave up the ghost).

Working Single stick works fine in any slot I can reach.

2nd (bad) stick caused no boot, then caused windows boot fail in second slot. Decided tossing it across the room was better than trying it in the 3rd slot.

Ok so, new one for me after 30 years......ram sticks go bad. Hmmmm. So there we go. NOTE: This stuff is easily 5 years old so, don't think there's any RMA Option....its G.Skill Trident Z F4-4000C 8gb modules x2. Moving on....
Lifetime warranty man! Don't bang it up to much 😂 they wont cover physical damage!

You do have to send both of them in for rma.
 
The good thing is memory prices are not bad at all, can probably get 16 gig modules for same price or even cheaper than you had with with the 8gig sticks.
 
Lifetime...wait...................what!? :D
Ighcn9.gif
 
My report: "FAAARRRGIN RAM!" Note: it's not the MB slots, its the stick itself gave up the ghost (guessing PCB/controller somehow gave up the ghost).

Working Single stick works fine in any slot I can reach.

2nd (bad) stick caused no boot, then caused windows boot fail in second slot. Decided tossing it across the room was better than trying it in the 3rd slot.

Ok so, new one for me after 30 years......ram sticks go bad. Hmmmm. So there we go. NOTE: This stuff is easily 5 years old so, don't think there's any RMA Option....its G.Skill Trident Z F4-4000C 8gb modules x2. Moving on....
Oh yes, yes they do. After hard drives and PSUs ram is probably the #3 failure we have at work. We're a financial trading infrastructure vendor. We run CPU cores at 100% load with all power saving features disabled for as long as they're in service. Those CPU cores spend all their time asking the ram "is it there yet"? like a petulant child. Usually the procs and boards handle it fine but we get a fair number of bad ram sticks. Fancy high speed ram running at high voltage? I'm not surprised one of your memory modules died. We kill server memory from tier 1 OEMs running at stock speeds and voltage. Usually takes a couple years to kill a stick of ram if it's going to go, but that's at stock speed and it would happen faster if they were overclocked and overvolted. Personally I've never had one fail, but I've also never bought the expensive max performance ram or really pushed it.
 
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