Annoying memory problem

sja · 22 Jul 2009 at 17:49

Could use advice if anyone can think of anything...

This relates to 4Gb of Corsair Dominator DDR2 (2x2gb) PC2 8500 C5 5-5-5-15. Motherboard is a Asus P5Q-E running the latest BIOS.

The computer has been running fine since the end of April when it was built.

Over the last couple of weeks it's begun randomly crashing/restarting.

I ran memtest a few days ago, and all tested OK. I went on to try a load of other things, but I couldn't get to the bottom of the problem.

I tried memtest again today, and it's failing, consistently, at 42% of the first test - every time.

Either of the modules on their own test perfectly in either of the two yellow slots, but if the modules are tested together memtest always fails at the same place.

I've tried fiddling with the timings to no avail - leaving it on auto gives 5-5-5-18, setting manually 5-5-5-15 (and 9-9-9-28 as suggested by OcUK support) makes no difference.

I'm at a total loss - anyone got any suggestions before I throw it out the window?

Cheers!
Steve.

Kennysevenfold · 22 Jul 2009 at 18:08

Have you tried running memtest with then both in the black slots.?
If they are running memtest fine on there own, i would think it might be a dodgy ram slot on the board.

sja · 22 Jul 2009 at 18:21

I've tried the two modules together in the black slots and run into a lot of problems - memtest basically failed as soon as it started with a lot of errors on the screen.

I took that to mean that the board simply wasn't intended to have the yellow slots empty.

Kennysevenfold · 22 Jul 2009 at 18:47

Hmmm tried 1 in yellow and 1 in black.?

run memtest with the same ram stick in all 4 slots

xaldub · 22 Jul 2009 at 18:49

What voltage are you running your memory at ? I have the P5Q-PRO, and the same memory and if I choose default BIOS settings it opts for 1.8v when the memory is actually specified fror 2.1v.

sja · 22 Jul 2009 at 19:45

Right, one step forward, and about 24 back.

It looks like the main issue here was memtest86. It doesn't like the BIOS setting for "Memory Remap Feature", which is enabled by default (so 64-bit OS can use all 4Gb). With that disabled memtest86 runs fine.

So, I grabbed memtest86+, and that runs an entire memory test perfectly, no errors.

I've set the voltage to 2.10 manually, and I've set the timings to 5-5-5-15 manually. All I can do now is wait to see if/when it crashes again, and work out what to try next. :S

Thanks for all the suggestions so far guys.

net_slayer · 25 Jul 2009 at 13:58

This sounds very similar to what was happening with my Maximus Formula board. The memtest was telling me the memory was fine but i was still getting crashes. I took the memory out and put it in another machine just to rule out a faulty slot and sure enough the memory crashed that machine too. A lot of good memtest was. I have since bought some new ram and havent had an issue yet in over a week. So, memory that memtest was passing was still killing my machine. Wierd.