PC will no longer run with two sticks RAM

Daftbrown

Daftbrown

Daftbrown

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Surrey
Hi,

I hope somebody can help.

I had two 8GB sticks (so 16GB) of Corsair Vengeance RAM at 2400mhz in DIMMS 1&3 of my Gigabyte Z87-UD4H motherboard.

It was running fine (for around six weeks) until recently where it crashed during BF4 and on restart I encountered a mobo error code ‘15’ – “Pre-memory Northbridge Initialization” and the PC just loops on and off without allowing me to enter BIOS.

I can remove one stick and run on 8GB RAM and the PC will boot and run fine but it will not allow for two sticks to be installed. I do not believe it to be an error with either stick of RAM as the PC will run with either stick installed in DIMM 1 or DIMM 2.

I have tried with the two sticks in both DIMM slot pairs 1 & 3 and 2 & 4 but the result is the same – mobo error 15.

I have not made any internal changes to my PC since it running fine and failing to run except for one thing, though I struggle to see that it could have been a contributing factor…?

I bought Roccat Kave XTD headphones and was using these for the first time – they worked fine until I switched on my Xbox 360 Controller receiver, also plugged in through USB. I got a Windows message saying that there were “not enough USB Controller Resources” and I cannot use the headphones and the Xbox controller at the same time. I have bought a mains powered hub but the problem remains. Only other USB connections are keyboard and mouse. Seems odd to ‘Lack Resources’ considering my PC spec.

That is a separate issue I would assume or could that have affected my RAM in some way? The original crash did coincide with my first use of the headphones.

Any assistance gratefully received. Thanks in advance.
 
try a long cmos clear/motherboard battery left out a good 30minutes

copy/backup any bios/oc setting first tho as it will wipe them
 
Thanks Wazza for the response but I just tried that and the result is the same. I've Googled the issue but I can't work it out.

What confuses me as while this is a relatively new build I had it working fine for weeks with 16GB recognised. That and neither stick appears faulty. Could I have just lost function from my DIMM slots 3 & 4?
 
bent pins/flexing motherboard/overtightened cpu cooler can all cause dead memory slots as it cuts off the signal inside the pcb from the cpu to the memory banks

try a quarter turn undone on your cpu heatsink screws,could inspect cpu socket for bent pins but only if you've removed the cpu recently

do you have an onboard bios switch on the mb? ifso try flicking it to the backup bios and see if the memory slots work,if they do it could be corrupted main bios (or bootup with just one stick then reflash the bios or update to latest bios through qflash and from within the bios itself) then try two sticks again
 
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...and I spoke too soon. It just shut itself off and started rebooting in a loop again - error 15. Too frustrated to fight it now - I can get by with 8 GB for now.
 
I had another fiddle with the CPU cooler and it is booting and recognising the 16GB now.

I'll hold off the celebrations for a bit seeing as I jumped the gun last time but at least I know it's related to the cooler.

Thanks again for your help.
 
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