POST Problems

chigley

chigley

chigley

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Joined
14 Oct 2009
Posts
272
Location
Bolton/London (home/uni.)
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!)
 
Last edited:
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.
 
Lelouch said:
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.
Click to expand...

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 :D See here for reference: http://www.squidoo.com/motherboard-beep-codes

All sorted!
 
Last edited:
Buchanan0204 said:
Any idea why memtest would show errors?
Click to expand...

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?
 
I have had a quick look and the only Corsair DDR3 1333 has a voltage rating of 1.5-1.6v

CHECK that that is the rated voltage for your ram and up the voltage to 1.6, it worked on a gigabyte board I had a while ago and you can still RMA it with a clear concience if you need too

EDIT oops just seen your update, glad you got it sorted
 
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