Boot issue, faulty memory?

[famas]

Hey,

All of a sudden, my pc has developed an issue when booting from a shut-down.

Before getting to the bios post it will beep 3 times and then restart from the beginning, it will do this 3 times in a row then on the 4th try it will do a single beep and finally load into windows, but with different memory timings, and the pc is running sluggish.
I've had a quick google, and it's suggesting there is a memory fault.

I'm so out of touch with it all, I'm after a little help trying to resolve the issue.
I've tried reseating the ram with no change, getting into the bios is proving tricky.

It's an old ryzen 5 system with 16gb of teamgroup 8pack ram.

Any thoughts?

Cheers.

 

[famas]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, you're going to have to throw me some rope here "speak as you might to a young child, or golden retriever"

Am I right in saying from the cpu-z data that it's currently running at 2128 (1064.1MHz) with 15.0 clocks?

I think after 3 attempts to boot with the XMP profile at 3200 with 14.0 clocks it fail safes to 2133 and finally boots. The pc seems to work okay but does seem sluggish.

Bearing in mind that it's ran fine for the last 6 years with the XMP profile.

I do clean the pc regularly, as it's an ITX case with an Alphacool Eisbaer solo cooler, it gets full of dust pretty quickly.

The CPU is water cooled with hard tubing, I've not checked the cooler mounts, do you suspect they have loosened? The ways it's configured, I doubt it would be loose, but I'll check.
ITX is a huge pain to work on when things go wrong, took me ages just to get the ram out!

 

[famas]

Thanks for confirming Tetras, I'll check the mounts now.

As for changing the timings, is it just a case of disabling the XMP profile and manually setting the ram frequency to 2133, 2666 or 2800
I think there is also an auto option.

 

[famas]

Thanks Warburton.

I checked the cooler mounts, and they seem okay.
I tried turning XMP to auto and the system booted straight into windows, so for some reason it doesn't like the original XMP profile any more.

I'll try turning XMP back on with lower frequency, will I have to adjust clocks also, or should i try keeping them at 14.0

 

[famas]

Okay, I've turned XMP back on with the 14.0 clock settings and bumped the frequency up 1 at a time.

I'm up to 3066mhz with no booting issue yet, shall I just leave it there?

I seem to remember an early issue with this board of it bricking when people tried to flash with a newer bios, which is why I never bothered, I then forgot all about it to be honest.

 

[famas]

Well this is truly bizarre, I've just bumped it up to 3200MHz and it's booted twice now with no issues?

No idea what's going on any more.

 

[famas]

I'm not sure what "infinity fabric" is?

In cpu-z, under the memory tab, the NB frequency is showing 1596.2MHz
And the DRAM frequency is also showing 1596.2MHz

FSB: DRAM 1:16
CL 14.0
tRCD 14
tRP 14
tRAS 31
tRC 97
CR 1T

 

[famas]

If it happens again, try changing your CMOS battery.

That can have a weird effect on the BIOS.

Glad you’re sorted

So I initially thought that this was the issue, but I've looked several times now for a CMOS battery on this board and I can't see it? I assumed all motherboards have one?

Infinity Fabric is just the interconnect bus used by the CPU to communicate between the *nodes of the CPU.

You want your IF to run in a 1:1 mode with your RAM as that reduces latency and prevents inefficient interconnect performance but it can get very complicated and you can run in a unsynchronised config and have improved performance but it’s really really advanced stuff.

When you have cores all on one large silicon board, you don’t need an interconnect and this was Intels approach for years and Intel called AMDs CPUs “glued together” (which isn’t technically incorrect but Intel have now switched to the same layout because the costs of producing smaller sized wafers are much cheaper).

*Context: <I don’t mean node but I can’t recall the exact name of the clusters of CPU cores>

While I read that and nodded along, I have no idea what any of it means but thank you.

 

[famas]

Right, I'll see if I can dig out a manual later and have another look. If it's under the heatsink or gpu it will be easier to just build a new pc

 

[famas]

So, the manual doesn't show a CMOS battery on the layout diagram at all, I was expecting to see a coin type battery, like on old motherboards.

It does however mention the CMOS battery later on in the manual?



So, after some googling, I think I've found it, seems it's not directly attached to the board but rather in a little plastic pouch stuck to the back of the Nichicon audio IO.

 

[famas]

Learn something new everyday.

I'll see if I can access mine easily, if the GPU is in the way I've got to completely dismantle the case and water blocks to remove it, which tbh I can't be arsed to do
I feel a new air cooled pc on the way

 

[famas]

Yeah I had a lot of fun building it and they look great, but I'm done with water cooling for now.
It's great all the while it's working but I don't have the time for maintenance anymore.

Like you say it's a ball ache even trying to do something simple in an itx case.

 

[famas]

I remember stress testing it with a few programmes when it was new as I have a slight CPU over clock too, I forget now what they were, maybe cinebench, memtest and Nvidia bench mark, so long ago I forget.

It was stable with all of those, and I've never had an issue with it in 6/7 years until now, though it's only been used as a gaming/vr rig.

I've started doing some video editing recently and it's starting to show it's age now, but it's done me well, it's a unique looking build but maybe time for an upgrade.