Faulty memory or motherboard... Help needed please

[lynx]

Hi,

I'm hoping that a tech here (or someone smarter than me) will help me figure out if I have a faulty memory stick or dodgy motherboard.

I have a system with the following components:

GA-MA770-DS3 (rev. 2.0) (latest BIOS default settings)
F2-6400CL4D (4*1GB)
AMD Phenom 9950 Quad Core

System has been running perfectly for almost a year until recently when I started getting stability issues and random (but numerous) bad sectors on my HDD's. Thinking my HDD's might be shot I low level formatted them and they passed all tests, meaning data must be being corrupted before the disks.

I ran memtest86+ which found about 110 errors in tests #5 and #7 and following are the steps I took to troubleshoot the memory and motherboard.

1. Tested each memory module separately in slot 1, all passed with no errors.

2. Tested each memory module separately in every slot, all passed with no errors.

3. Reinserted all memory, tested, 1st pass 16 errors in test #7 and 2nd pass even more errors in test #7 and about 90 in test #5.

4. Noticing all errors happened around the 1250-1252MB address I removed the memory from slots 1 & 2, tested memory in slots 3 & 4, all passed with no errors.

5. Took the memory from slots 3 & 4 put them into slots 1 & 2, tested, all passed with no errors. Removed and marked as 'correctly working'.

6. Installed remaining memory into slots 1 & 2, tested, 1st pass 16 errors in test #7 and 2nd pass even more errors in test #7 and about 90 in test #5.

7. Removed memory from slots 1 & 2, installed them into slots 3 & 4 (to rule out faulty dimm slots), tested, got exact same errors as in step 6.

8. Removed memory from slot 3, replaced with marked 'correctly working' memory stick, tested, all passed with no errors.

9. Removed memory from slot 4 and marked as 'correctly working' (leaving marked 'correctly working' memory in slot 3).

10. Installed memory removed from slot 3 in step 8 into slot 4, tested, got exact same errors as in step 6.

11. Removed memory from slot 4 and marked as 'faulty'.

All the testing points to one of my memory sticks being faulty (final stick in slot 4) but it only seems to be faulty when paired with another memory stick (any memory stick) and passes all tests when tested separately.

So is this memory stick faulty or do I have motherboard problems?

I would really like to pin point the issue before replacing hardware that may not be the problem.

Any suggestions, help or recommendations that you guys are able to give would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

[Tradesman]

Sounds like the stick identified in item 11 may be bad (good testing methodology by the way) as it, or combined w/ another also produced errors in tandem w/ another in slots 1-2 as well as 3-4, might want to contact about RMA with rma@gskillusa.com (Americas) or rma@gskill.com (world)....Might also suggest ref this post to avoid retyping everything

http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=7518

[lynx]

Thanks Tradesman, I will get the rma process started now.

Thanks again.

[Tradesman]

Let us know how the new works

[lynx]

Yeah no problem, I'll post when the new stick arrives. It will probably take a while to get to me here in Aus.

[Tradesman]

I'll be looking

[lynx]

Hi Tman,

The new memory from my RMA just arrived and it tested perfectly, absolutely no errors with memtest86+.

Thanks for your help.

lynx

[Tradesman]

No problem, glad I could help, Enjoy!

[lynx]

New RMA'd Memory Issues... Help needed again please

Well it seems that I might have celebrated a bit to early.

Running memtest86+ produces absolutely no errors yet Windows 7 gets a BSOD about 5 - 10 minutes into running. The BSOD is an event id 1001 MEMORY_MANAGER bugcheck. I have tried both default and manual settings in the BIOS with no change. I have also tried installing Windows 7 fresh several times with the same results.

I have 4 x 1GB F2-6400CL4S 4-4-4-12 sticks, slot 1 and 2 have my original memory and slot 3 and 4 have the new memory received through the RMA process.

I was able to run CPU-Z and found the following differences between my original memory and the new memory...

Slot 1 and 2


Slot 3 and 4


Are these memory sticks compatible? Would the differences in the tRC be what is causing Windows to BSOD?

Thanks for your help.

[GSKILL TECH]

Manually input timings to that EPP #1 setting.

If problem persists, post a pictures of timings in BIOS. Or post what they are defaulting to.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[lynx]

Won't setting the speeds to the EPP # 1 setting cause issues because it doesn't look like my original memory supports those timings. Those timings are not shown in the slot 1 and 2 jpeg.

Here is the CPU-Z image of what the current timings are set to:



The BIOS defaults timings to: 5-5-5-15
Command rate defaults to: --- (I guess this means not set so then defaults to 2T)
Voltage defaults to: normal (I have a Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 and I'm guessing normal is 1.8v).

I will wait to hear back from you before I try those manual settings.

Can anyone verify that the "normal" DDR2 voltage setting for the Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 is 1.8v because the manual setting adjusts voltage by 0.025 increments. I don't know what to set it at to get to 2.1v.

Thanks

[lynx]

Update...

Manually configured settings to the EPP # 1 settings and Windows still gets a BSOD. Any suggestions?

Thanks

[lynx]

Update...

I have tried the following:

1. Removed the newly received RMA memory leaving in 2 x 1GB sticks of my original memory and the system runs stable. Stress tested using Prime95 without any issues.

2. Removed the 2 x 1GB sticks of my original memory and installed the 2 x 1GB sticks of the newly received RMA memory and the system runs stable. Stress tested using Prime95 without any issues.

3. Reinstalled all 4 x 1GB sticks of memory (2 x 1GB original + 2 x 1GB RMA) and the system crashes with BSOD MEMORY_MANAGER bugcheck. Tried all sorts of settings in the BIOS without any change. The BIOS will only allow the Row Cycle Time to be set between 11T~26T.

All my testing tells me that these memory sticks are not compatible and now I'm stuck with 2GB in my system instead of 4GB all because of 1 faulty memory stick. I thought the RMA process was supposed to send back an identical replacement of the faulty memory.

Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[GSKILL TECH]

The EPP #1 settings aren't shown, but you can manually configure them as so.

Voltage is 1.80V (Normal) so this memory needs +0.3V

For 4 modules, you can raise CPU-NB Voltage to see if that helps. Otherwise, it is possible that you have two kits that are not compatible with each other. I would suggest send them all in for RMA so you can have two recent kits that should work together. This is why for dual and triple channel motherboards we only recommend purchasing memory in full kits, because these issues can happen.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

Won't setting the speeds to the EPP # 1 setting cause issues because it doesn't look like my original memory supports those timings. Those timings are not shown in the slot 1 and 2 jpeg.

Here is the CPU-Z image of what the current timings are set to:



The BIOS defaults timings to: 5-5-5-15
Command rate defaults to: --- (I guess this means not set so then defaults to 2T)
Voltage defaults to: normal (I have a Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 and I'm guessing normal is 1.8v).

I will wait to hear back from you before I try those manual settings.

Can anyone verify that the "normal" DDR2 voltage setting for the Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 is 1.8v because the manual setting adjusts voltage by 0.025 increments. I don't know what to set it at to get to 2.1v.

Thanks