Memory slot faulty?

[Rozzy85]

I've had a long problem with this computer and it freezing up. It can go on for months being fine then suddenly it'll have a fit. Most of the time it happens it fails to start a few times and then it's back to normal but this last episode completely did it in and it would not start at all. Powering up resulted in constant restarting until I turned the power off from the PSU. Decided to do a proper memtest from DOS instead of windows (I have done it before but it was a while ago) and as soon as I did it this happened.

http://www.hamaloo.co.uk/img/mem1.jpg

Suspecting it was the RAM I started to remove each stick starting from bank 4 to 1. Every time I did this it just got worst and memtest just froze up every time.

Slot 1, 2 and 3 used. It froze up 5 seconds in.

http://www.hamaloo.co.uk/img/mem2.jpg

Just slot 1 used. Memtest doesn't even load properly.

http://www.hamaloo.co.uk/img/mem3.jpg

It appears that slot 1 or maybe 2 is faulty as when I use just slot 3 and 4 it's fine and memtest ran without a hitch. No weird restarts either.

http://www.hamaloo.co.uk/img/mem4.jpg

I've tested all four RAM sticks in the 3 and 4 slots and they appear fine so I'm assuming the motherboard has a fault?

 

[Jamin280672]

First question is specs please, CPU, Motherboard and RAM.

However I will cut to the chase, if you experiencing problems with 2 of your memory slots its not always the slots itself, I had this problem with a brand new 4770k CPU and a new Gigabyte motherboard, after a lot of RMA'ing, it turned out to be the memory controller in the CPU, got the thing replaced and everything was fine after that.

 

[Rozzy85]

CPU is Q6600 2.40GHz. RAM is in the image and the board is Gigabyte but I can't remember the model no. Chipset is in the images.

If it was the memory controller wouldn't it still have problems now as it still needs to address the RAM only that it's half? I wouldn't of thought it'd address each bank separately. I don't have a spare CPU to use anyway so I can't test it.

 

[Jamin280672]

your using 2 slots at the moment next to each other, running it in single channel, it could be the dual channel part of it that's damaged, a lot of people often experience this problem when they delid there CPU's too, they damage the memory controller PCB and find they can only run single channel with 2 slots rather than dual channel.

http://forum.hwbot.org/showthread.php?t=47539&page=9

You have 2 channels built into your CPU for memory, Channel A = slots 1 and 3, and Channel B = slots 2 & 4, each channel makes up a dual channel set, however currently your only working slots are 3 and 4 this is running them single channel, could be down to old age, degrading from over volts or even overclocking etc.