Motherboard not booting with RAM in one slot

project86

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 3, 2004
Messages
288
Upgrading the system one of my kids uses, and went from a 7700K in a cheap H110 m-itx board to an 8700K in a nice Asus Z370 m-itx board. Got a combo from the classifieds here containing the board, CPU, and two sticks of good RAM. It sat for a couple months during the holidays and I'm finally throwing it together but running into a problem.

The issue is that whenever I place some RAM into the A1 slot (which is the one closest to the CPU), it refuses to boot. It won't send a video signal out and the connected USB devices (hardwired keyboard for example) don't get power either. Switch that same stick of RAM into the B1 slot and all is well.

I tried 3 different RAM sticks just to be sure. They all work in B1 but not in A1. Putting RAM in both slots won't boot either so it's clearly an issue with that slot itself.

I've double checked all cable connections, reseated everything, and updated to the newest BIOS. Still won't work. I'm assuming it is a hardware issue at this point but wondering if anyone has experience with similar issues or any ideas that I can try.
 
I'm an AMD guy but have you inspected the CPU socket and DIMM socket?

The memory controller is on the CPU so anything between the DIMM and CPU could interfere. Be it a bent pin or dirty pin. Be careful trying to clean the cpu socket pins though. The ram socket is easy to clean. I just take some lint off a swab and douse it in alcohol and jam it in there, and carefully run it past all the pads.

Then there's the possibility that one DIMM socket is more sensitive (less favorable trace length to the cpu) so if you happen to be pushing the limit of the dimm with the default configuration, then moving it to the less favorable socket could cause it to produce errors.
 
Upgrading the system one of my kids uses, and went from a 7700K in a cheap H110 m-itx board to an 8700K in a nice Asus Z370 m-itx board. Got a combo from the classifieds here containing the board, CPU, and two sticks of good RAM. It sat for a couple months during the holidays and I'm finally throwing it together but running into a problem.

The issue is that whenever I place some RAM into the A1 slot (which is the one closest to the CPU), it refuses to boot. It won't send a video signal out and the connected USB devices (hardwired keyboard for example) don't get power either. Switch that same stick of RAM into the B1 slot and all is well.

I tried 3 different RAM sticks just to be sure. They all work in B1 but not in A1. Putting RAM in both slots won't boot either so it's clearly an issue with that slot itself.

I've double checked all cable connections, reseated everything, and updated to the newest BIOS. Still won't work. I'm assuming it is a hardware issue at this point but wondering if anyone has experience with similar issues or any ideas that I can try.
Did you microwave it?
 
Aren’t most mobo’s designed to have A2/B2 populated first?
 
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Check the ram lock tabs very closely with a module installed to see that the memory is properly seating in the slot. I had a mini board I got used that one of the lock tabs was deformed enough to keep the module from seating correctly causing no post. Decided to just break it off since no warranty was in effect and lo and behold it posted right up and worked for years like that.
 
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