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Hello and salutations to everyone here,
Over the last few months I've been trying to narrow down what causes my computer to go black screen with looping sound. My initial thoughts were to point blame to my GPU, but the results on testing it was inconclusive (I don't have another machine to test the card on, and living further away from friends or family that still own a PC).
After some tests and researching, some people were pointing out that it might be a memory issue. So this leads me here!
Computer Specs:
Intel i7-3770K @ Stock
ASUS Sabertooth Z77 Running Latest BIOS
G.Skill Sniper 1866 4x4 (Two Separate Kits)
Corsair GS700 PSU
EVGA 2GB 660 Ti SC
1 x Intel SSD
Memory is set to run with XMP, and boots fine. Voltages are stock.
From doing some reading here, I didn't even think about two 4x2 kits potentially not matching correctly, but I decided to do my own testing to come to the bottom of this. I used Memtest from HCI as suggested by a Administrator in a different post to run my tests.
The Initial Test
This was just to see if I had any errors show up. As you can see there are three instances here.
Although I did not screen shot the results of several other tests, I ran the following with all kits installed:
250-350% Coverage: XMP Disabled, Manual Timings and Frequency Set - Errors Exist
250-350% Coverage: BIOS Set to Auto (DDR3-1600), Manual Timings and Frequency Set - Errors Exist
So this lead me to digging to find out which stick of RAM was faulty. As I stated above, I have two 4x2 kits, two of them were from May 2012, while the other two are Nov 2012.
I extracted all of my kits and placed one kit at a time in DIMM_1. I set the memory settings back to XMP and ran the sticks as 1866.
Individual Testing - (Incomplete):
My next steps are to test out the DIMM slots on my mobo with the known good RAM sticks. i.e. DIMM_A1 + DIMM_B1, etc. Then with all three placed in as a test.
Grouped Testing - (Incomplete)
At this stage, memory issues is a concern for me, and I purchased these from Newegg in 2012, but found out that GSkill stands by their memory units with a lifetime warranty! Would I be able to RMA my fault memory stick given these results?
Thank you for reading this long and rather dreary post!
Over the last few months I've been trying to narrow down what causes my computer to go black screen with looping sound. My initial thoughts were to point blame to my GPU, but the results on testing it was inconclusive (I don't have another machine to test the card on, and living further away from friends or family that still own a PC).
After some tests and researching, some people were pointing out that it might be a memory issue. So this leads me here!
Computer Specs:
Intel i7-3770K @ Stock
ASUS Sabertooth Z77 Running Latest BIOS
G.Skill Sniper 1866 4x4 (Two Separate Kits)
Corsair GS700 PSU
EVGA 2GB 660 Ti SC
1 x Intel SSD
Memory is set to run with XMP, and boots fine. Voltages are stock.
From doing some reading here, I didn't even think about two 4x2 kits potentially not matching correctly, but I decided to do my own testing to come to the bottom of this. I used Memtest from HCI as suggested by a Administrator in a different post to run my tests.
The Initial Test
This was just to see if I had any errors show up. As you can see there are three instances here.
Although I did not screen shot the results of several other tests, I ran the following with all kits installed:
250-350% Coverage: XMP Disabled, Manual Timings and Frequency Set - Errors Exist
250-350% Coverage: BIOS Set to Auto (DDR3-1600), Manual Timings and Frequency Set - Errors Exist
So this lead me to digging to find out which stick of RAM was faulty. As I stated above, I have two 4x2 kits, two of them were from May 2012, while the other two are Nov 2012.
I extracted all of my kits and placed one kit at a time in DIMM_1. I set the memory settings back to XMP and ran the sticks as 1866.
Individual Testing - (Incomplete):
- May 2012 Stick #1 = Immediate Error after 5 minutes of running. Halted the result and removed this stick.
- May 2012 Stick #2 = No errors after 300% Coverage
- Nov 2012 Stick #1 = No Errors after 250% Coverage
- Nov 2012 Stick #2 = No Errors after 300% Coverage
My next steps are to test out the DIMM slots on my mobo with the known good RAM sticks. i.e. DIMM_A1 + DIMM_B1, etc. Then with all three placed in as a test.
Grouped Testing - (Incomplete)
- 2 x Nov 2012 = TBD
- 1 May 2012 + 1 Nov 2012 (I know this may cause some issues as I've read in this forum as they are made as kits and tested as kits) = TBD
- All Three Sticks = TBD
At this stage, memory issues is a concern for me, and I purchased these from Newegg in 2012, but found out that GSkill stands by their memory units with a lifetime warranty! Would I be able to RMA my fault memory stick given these results?
Thank you for reading this long and rather dreary post!
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