Seeking verification of potential motherboard/RAM issue!

[Vaiur]

Hello sevenforums members!

Last week (February 24th, 2012) I received all the parts I ordered from Newegg and built my new PC. However, after a full week and a half-ish of headaches and frustration, I'm posting in hopes of receiving some insight on the reasoning behind my computer suffering from system hangs, freezing, and BSODs. For the first few days it was intermittent crashing with maybe 1 or 2 BSODs per day, however it became more frequent, and it has eventually come to the point where my rig is outright crashing without so much as a BSOD or minidump, in addition to several BSODs.

After some reading around (especially on this forum), today I decided to take the liberty of running memtest86+ v4.20, as by this point I had begun to become severely suspicious of my memory or motherboard DIMM slots as being the culprit of my frustration and headaches.

Both RAM modules pass memtest86+ with flying colors in slots 1 and 2 after several hours of testing, however when I put what I suspected was a faulty module (which I labelled in my notebook as module2) in slot A2, I received upwards of 6000 errors within the first minute. Curious as to whether it was the slot itself or the module at fault, I replaced module2 with module1 into the same slot, and got no errors. However, I noticed something peculiar: slot A2 on my motherboard is reading BOTH modules at 200 MHz [DDR400] as opposed to the actual 666 MHz [DDR1333] that they should be. This has me wondering: are my RAM modules at fault here, or is this a fault in my motherboards DIMM slots, specifically A2?

I really hope to receive some insight from you guys here at sevenforums. I've attached images of the memtest86+ failures, as well as an image confirming that slot A2 is reading my RAM modules at 200 MHZ [DDR400].

If it helps, my motherboard is an ASUS M4A87TD/USB3, and my RAM is G.SKILL RipjawsX 2x2GB 1333MHz F3-10666CL7D-4GBXH.

Thanks in advance,
Vaiur

 

[Vaiur]

A little update.

The suspected failing module (module2) previously failed in slot A2, however the suspected functioning module (module1) had passed in A2. Similarly, module2 failed tests in B2. I'm currently running memtest86+ v4.20 on module1 in B2, and still no errors yet.

Beginning to suspect that module2 is, in fact, bad.

 

[writhziden]

Memtest86+ sometimes gives erroneous readings for the memory frequency with newer technology. Start by RMAing the RAM kit since one module is bad. See if that resolves the Windows issues first. If not, we can look deeper into the problem with Memtest86+. Also, have you tried running Windows with just the one good module to see if crashes and freezes stop?

Remember when handling system components, such as RAM, to Avoid Static Damage to Your PC

 

[Vaiur]

Yes, it runs fine on one module with no BSODs, crashes, or lockups. When I introduce the second (suspected bad?) module, stuff hits the fan.

 

[writhziden]

What if you run just the second (suspected bad?) RAM module by itself. Does Windows also crash?

 

[Vaiur]

Yes. It will hang and likes to restart.

EDIT: Also whenever I use the "bad" module, the MemOK! LED feature of my mobo lights up on every single load. Supposedly this is calibrating the module to better suit the compatibility needs of the mobo, but it still likes to hang/restart/etc no matter what timings or voltages I set the RAM to, over/under/stock.

 

[writhziden]

Yeah, I think it is safe to say you have a bad module and should RMA the kit.

 

[Vaiur]

Thanks for your replies, writhziden. Always good to get another opinion, especially from someone with much more knowledge on the subject than myself.

Much appreciated!