I've been having some issues getting my PC stable the last few days, every time I think I've got it stable it proves me wrong by locking up and going into a boot loop. My specs are in sig.
Originally I thought the issue was bad RAM as windows was only showing as 12gb available when I have a 4x4GB kit installed. CPUz was showing all 4 sticks were being detected but one of them wasn't being used. I tried each stick one at a time to find out which one wasn't working and all sticks worked fine individually and eventually found that one specific slot wasn't working right and putting all 4 sticks in the slots to the left of the CPU meant that windows once again shown 16GB.
I now run into another issue. I had reset the BIOS and since I first built this PC windows wont boot at stock until I enabled XMP for the RAM but this time I couldn't even get past the post screen into the BIOS so I could turn on the XMP profile without it boot looping. I got past this and enabled XMP by removing the 2 sticks of RAM I had moved from the bad slots, once XMP was enabled I could put both sticks back in and windows would boot fine.
To check the system was stable without any further bios changes I run Aida64 and OCCT for an hour each without an issue. At this point I thought I got things stable and started using my PC as normal, then after about 20 minutes the PC froze and powered off. It wouldn't boot again until I removed the 2 sticks of RAM I'd moved.
I ran the PC for a while with just 8gb RAM and had no problems so I tried swapping the 2 installed sticks for the 2 I'd removed and still no problems. All 4 sticks back in and working for a short while before crashing, sometimes it would even crash with zero load just sitting idle on the desktop.
I had a couple occasions windows would boot back up after a crash and only 4 or 8GB RAM would be shown available. It's usually possible to tell if its about to boot with less RAM as it'll take about 30 seconds before it'll post.
So steps I have tried:
- Updating BIOS
- Cleaning RAM slots
- Reseating CPU
- Manually setting voltages and RAM timings instead of using XMP profiles, windows won't boot
- Memory test on each RAM stick with no errors found
- Stress tested CPU + RAM using Aida64 & OCCT
The PC has never been heavily overclocked, usually sat around 4GHz with 1.2v on the core and the RAM downclocked to about 2333MHz. CPU is cooled by a coolermaster AIO and temps are usually around 30c going upto mid 50s under load.
Originally I thought the issue was bad RAM as windows was only showing as 12gb available when I have a 4x4GB kit installed. CPUz was showing all 4 sticks were being detected but one of them wasn't being used. I tried each stick one at a time to find out which one wasn't working and all sticks worked fine individually and eventually found that one specific slot wasn't working right and putting all 4 sticks in the slots to the left of the CPU meant that windows once again shown 16GB.
I now run into another issue. I had reset the BIOS and since I first built this PC windows wont boot at stock until I enabled XMP for the RAM but this time I couldn't even get past the post screen into the BIOS so I could turn on the XMP profile without it boot looping. I got past this and enabled XMP by removing the 2 sticks of RAM I had moved from the bad slots, once XMP was enabled I could put both sticks back in and windows would boot fine.
To check the system was stable without any further bios changes I run Aida64 and OCCT for an hour each without an issue. At this point I thought I got things stable and started using my PC as normal, then after about 20 minutes the PC froze and powered off. It wouldn't boot again until I removed the 2 sticks of RAM I'd moved.
I ran the PC for a while with just 8gb RAM and had no problems so I tried swapping the 2 installed sticks for the 2 I'd removed and still no problems. All 4 sticks back in and working for a short while before crashing, sometimes it would even crash with zero load just sitting idle on the desktop.
I had a couple occasions windows would boot back up after a crash and only 4 or 8GB RAM would be shown available. It's usually possible to tell if its about to boot with less RAM as it'll take about 30 seconds before it'll post.
So steps I have tried:
- Updating BIOS
- Cleaning RAM slots
- Reseating CPU
- Manually setting voltages and RAM timings instead of using XMP profiles, windows won't boot
- Memory test on each RAM stick with no errors found
- Stress tested CPU + RAM using Aida64 & OCCT
The PC has never been heavily overclocked, usually sat around 4GHz with 1.2v on the core and the RAM downclocked to about 2333MHz. CPU is cooled by a coolermaster AIO and temps are usually around 30c going upto mid 50s under load.
It "seems" to be stable for now, managed to play a few games without any crashes so hopefully lasts long enough to raise the money for a replacement. Is there anything I could do to say for certain its one thing or another?