Cold memory???

Hrmm. this is really really wierd behavior in my opinion for memory.

I have at home some old kingston BH-5 memory. A 1GB dual channel kit. I used to run this 24/7 at 250 [email protected] with no problems. I had a fan on them but they never even got hot to the touch. They hummed away merrily with no problems and no memtest errors ever.

About 10 months ago, I started modding my main PC. I was happily still using the computer off and on and finally took the whole thing apart for some major painting. This was back in May. All of a sudden before I complete my modding my brother moves back to my parents house (I use their garage cause it's better then my apartment) while looking for a new house for him and his soon to be wife. They stuff the garage so full of junk I could barely find any of my parts to work on and hoped everything would be OK when they finally moved out.

Fast forward to now. Brother FINALLY moved his crap out of the way and I was able to get to my computer parts. I started assembling everything to make sure everything still worked. I started with the basics, CPU, mobo, PSU, memory and vid card to see if stuff still at least posted.

BEEP BEEP BEEP.. that's all I got out the mobo. No post. No nothing. Something was wrong. I switched vid cards with my second PC and ruled that out. I look at the board and noticed some jumpers were missing. Replaced those in the proper positions and still wasn't posting. Thought the CMOS battery might have died and was causing a problem so got a new one. Nothing.

Next thing to try was the memory. I put in my patriot TCCD stuff from my second system and voila it posted!!! Hrmm.. seemed to me my memory was dead. Just to fiddle around I went back and forth with different slots and memory. My kingston wouldn't post no matter the configuration and anything else I used did. Dang... Still I didn't want to give up.

I went into the bios and looked at the default vmem values. 2.6. It's suppose to be the minimum for BH-5. So, I jack it up to 2.8. I didn't want to blow the TCCD's so I didn't go further.

I restart the system, put my kingston in and viola they post!!!! Humming along like they used too. I ran 4 hours this morning on memtest 8 and checked them out at lunch today and had zero errors. Purring along like they used to.

For grins and giggles, I moved the voltage back to 2.6 to double check if that was the problem. They posted like normal. I cleared the CMOS and they posted as well.

I don't get it. It seems to me like they needed to "warm up" after sitting so long before going back to normal. Is that an odd perception of mine or the reality of the situation?

Well, if you were living in Alaska in the winter and the ram was sub zero temps it would make perfectly good sense. However, how cold could it be in the South in October? A psychological theory is more in order. The ram felt abandoned and rejected. When you finally came to it's rescue it wanted to pay you back for abandoning it by making you realize how you took it for granted. I'd better stop before the men with the straight jacket show up.

I know.. I have no idea why it wouldn't boot. It's working fine now. I even dropped the voltage back down to make sure, and it booted just fine. For some reason it just wouldn't post initially and now it does.

On a side note... my CPU is no longer OCing at all. Grrr... It'll happily do 2.2GHz at stock. I can't get it to do anything above that though and have it prime stable no matter how much juice I give it. It's not running hot at all either. It just acting weird too. To top that off, it keeps wanting to set the default multiplier for 4x instead of the default of 11x for my 3400+. If I leave it at auto it goes to 4x. I have to set it to 11x and 200 FSB to get it to work.

It's not the mobo because I cranked it up to 300 HTT and set the multiplier to 7x and it ran prime for 7 hours no problem. Woke up this morning tried to mess with some setting and couldn't get it to go past 1 minute in prime with anything past 2.2Ghz. So annoying right now.

amen to rseven's answer

I've had cold start issues with stuff with marginal caps in.

Did you blow the dust out of the sockets and clean the pins before you put it together? I'm thinking maybe it grew a film of some crud while it was sitting, and you just didn't have good contact the first time. Could also be the caps, like RoadWarrior said, but I'm hoping for a bad contact cause if that's it you already fixed it.

Are you sure the other problem is the CPU and not the RAM operating in geezer mode?

I used a145 PSI air compressor to blow and clean everything off before putting it all together. Everything had been clean as a whistle. It's all humming along just fine and dandy now though. Scared the crap out of me. Thought something had gone bad in the months I hadn't used my parts and didn't know where to begin replacing. Don't get me wrong, I like buying new parts all the time, but that's because I can sell off old parts. If parts die on me, that's just adding a huge hole to my wallet.

It's also official my CPU can't do anything above 235 FSB anymore. It just won't budge. Even this takes 1.65 volts. Any more voltage and I get nada for speed increases; even with the cpu running nice and cold. However, it is working again and prime stable all night long at 2.35 GHz and my memory running synced with 2-2-2-7 timings. Can't complain about the memory anymore except that I already ordered a 2GB kit to replaces this 1GB kit of BH-5's.

As I said, it was really really wierd about not wanting to boot up at all at first. I could move parts around and the memory wouldn't work in anything. It wasn't until I gave it some extra juice that they finally "warmed up" "raised from the dead" "came back alive" whatever description you want to use. Since then, they've done what they've always done. I don't get it either.

i've never seen that issue with memory but i have an older mac quadra that hadn't been turned on for years, it took quite a few cold boots to get the thing to awaken.