POST Problems

[chigley]

Just put a new build together today, and for the first time ever I'm having POST problems

Three BIOS beeps. The first two are a lower pitch than the third, not sure if that's relevant or not.

Spec. as follows:

• i5 2400 3.1GHz
• 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair DDR3 1333MHz RAM
• Corsair CX430 PSU
• MSI H67MA-E35 Motherboard

A few Google searches revealed that 3 beeps means RAM problems. To test this I tried each of the two RAM sticks in each of the two memory slots. Still got three beeps each time. Exact test results are:

Stick 1 Slot 1 - FAIL 3 beeps. Memtest86: Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (after 1s)
Stick 1 Slot 2 - FAIL as above. Note that Memtest86 failed on exactly 27% progress through the first test each time
Stick 2 Slot 1 - FAIL 3 beeps (Memtest: lasts longer than last time, but freezes completely after 2s)
Stick 2 Slot 2 - FAIL as with first two tests

Any clues appreciated!

Thanks

EDIT: Just thought I'd add, I can enter the BIOS setup just fine and the "physical memory" value correctly shows as 4096MB. In the Hardware Monitor, DRAM voltage is reading at 1.5V.
UPDATE: I've tried running Memtest86 v3.5b instead of v4 and it's been running for over a minute now with no problems. Will update if it finds anything wrong.
UPDATE: Fixed, see post below (Well, not fixed, it just wasn't broken!)

 

[chigley]

You've answered your questions mate, it's the RAMs. Either you have to set the advertised specs of the RAM manually or if that fails, RMA it.

See update above - after running an older version of Memtest86, it's been testing my RAM for quite some time with no errors.

Anybody got any ideas?

EDIT: Absolutely unbelievable, it's an MSI thing: one beep for every USB device plugged in. I disable the USB controller in the BIOS - one beep See here for reference: http://www.squidoo.com/motherboard-beep-codes

All sorted!

 

[chigley]

Any idea why memtest would show errors?

Absolutely no idea, I'd never even used it before last night!
The older version (3.5b) ran perfectly for a long time though. I'm guessing/hoping it was just some compatibility issue with version 4?