I'm stumped - help?

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[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2002
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I'm building a rig for a VM lab and I cannot figure out what on earth is going on here. This is the first time I've been stumped in years. Any ideas?

Specs:
i5-6600k
16GB (4x4) Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400
Gigabyte GA-Z170M-D3H
500gb Samsung 850 EVO
Corsair CX600
Corsair H100i

Put it all together, seemed to work fine. Installed Win 7 and threw in my UBCD for an overnight Memtest86+ run. The next day, there was a large number of errors. Ran Prime95 for a few hours. Small FFTs ran fine but Blend would error out almost instantly.

So, I reseated the RAM sticks to try again - I don't like the way these new RAM slots work and figured one of the sticks may not have seated all the way. After doing this, I couldn't get it to POST at all with all 4 sticks in. Whatever, RAM must be bad. I returned it for another set of the same stuff along with an additional 8x2 Patriot set just in case. This is where it really gets interesting. It won't POST with more than 2 of the 4GB sticks installed, 2 sticks POST just fine in any configuration. It won't POST with with Patriot in dual-channel configuration. Will POST with them in single channel. I picked up an ASRock Z170M Pro4S and a Corsair AX860 to swap out the next 2 likely culprits. Same behavior. With both motherboards, the beep code indicates faulty RAM. I have my doubts it's the CPU but I suppose it's possible? BIOS firmware maybe?
 
It has been brought to my attention that the NB is on the CPU now so I'm betting that's the culprit. What a time to be alive.
 
you need to manually configure your RAM in the bios with one stick installed and then install the other.

I had the same issue on a z170 board, but once I manually setup the speed and timings I had no issues.

Could also be your board doesn't like that ram, I seriously doubt its the CPU
 
You may need to change System Agent (SA) and CPU IO voltage, it seems to be a common problem on Skylake.
Try SA at 1.25V and IO at 1.2V.
If it works reduce them to find the level you need.
 
Thanks guys, I'll give that a try. I don't think it's a particular incompatibility between the board and RAM because I tried two different boards and two different sets of RAM.
 
Set the RAM speeds and timings manually. No dice.

This board will only let me set the SA voltage up to 1.2. Did that, set RAM to 1.25 for shits and giggles. IO is fixed at .95. No dice.
 
Have you tried increasing the RAM to maybe 1.30v? I recently had issues with memory on a x99 build and it turned out the RAM needed extra power.
 
Swapped the ASRock board for the Gigabyte I was originally using. The ASRock just doesn't have jack for configuration options.

Set the IO and SA to recommended voltages. No go. Increased RAM voltage to 1.25 and decreased speed to 1866mhz. POSTed and, so far, stable in Prime95. I'll let that run overnight and start playing with the speed and voltage more tomorrow.

Not sure if it was a combination of the IO and RAM voltage and speed, or purely the RAM voltage and speed. Nevertheless, it's obviously RAM related and that's 3 sets in a row that wouldn't POST at factory ratings. Is this 2015 or 2005? :D
 
I had ram stability issues on my ASRock board but the latest bios completely fixed it and can now even overclock a bit beyond the XMP overclock!
Look for the latest bios, only released a few days back.

I'm confused what you mean about "jack for configuration options".
My ASRock board is swimming in them!
 
Last edited:
It only had a couple of options for RAM speed and voltage, also did not have IO voltage. It was a Pro4s. To be fair, I didn't update the BIOS.
 
Its definitely worth updating the BIOS, ram issues are the kind of thing that get fixed.

Even with all the settings to tweak, I couldnt get my Xtreme 4+ to run my memory at rated speed, I had to downclock 200MHz to get it stable.
After the BIOS update, it can now overclock it by 100MHz.
 
I'm building a rig for a VM lab and I cannot figure out what on earth is going on here. This is the first time I've been stumped in years. Any ideas?

Specs:
i5-6600k
16GB (4x4) Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400
Gigabyte GA-Z170M-D3H
500gb Samsung 850 EVO
Corsair CX600
Corsair H100i

Put it all together, seemed to work fine. Installed Win 7 and threw in my UBCD for an overnight Memtest86+ run. The next day, there was a large number of errors. Ran Prime95 for a few hours. Small FFTs ran fine but Blend would error out almost instantly.

So, I reseated the RAM sticks to try again - I don't like the way these new RAM slots work and figured one of the sticks may not have seated all the way. After doing this, I couldn't get it to POST at all with all 4 sticks in. Whatever, RAM must be bad. I returned it for another set of the same stuff along with an additional 8x2 Patriot set just in case. This is where it really gets interesting. It won't POST with more than 2 of the 4GB sticks installed, 2 sticks POST just fine in any configuration. It won't POST with with Patriot in dual-channel configuration. Will POST with them in single channel. I picked up an ASRock Z170M Pro4S and a Corsair AX860 to swap out the next 2 likely culprits. Same behavior. With both motherboards, the beep code indicates faulty RAM. I have my doubts it's the CPU but I suppose it's possible? BIOS firmware maybe?

May need some ring and/or vccsa voltage.
Could be some type of RAM IC that needs looser than what the board sets as well.
DDR4..oy vey.
I have a kit that will absolutely not do 1T no matter the frequency.
Some kits require much TRFC as well.
I would manually set 2T, slop the timings up, and raise trfc by 100 with 2 sticks before trying 4.
Also bump ring and vccsa voltage maybe by .03-4
and 1.26v RAM voltage. (wouldn't hurt)
The chip could also have a weak IMC.
 
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