- Joined
- Apr 25, 2008
My computer suffered a whole slew of problems last month and I just got it back on its feet. It all started when I got a BSoD that I could not recover from; I bought a new hard drive, just figuring it was a dead hard drive, and the problem persisted. Got some help from a repair guy and he said it was bad RAM.
So I bought the new RAM, 4GB and two sticks. Installed both and adjusted the timings on my BIOS to the recommended settings (8-8-8-21). Blue screen of death. I took one stick out and it started up fine; I assumed it was a faulty stick of RAM. But just to check, I took the "good" stick out and put the "bad" stick back in. Worked fine. So apparently my RAM was working fine separately but not together.
My friend suggested I raise the voltage to 1.65 (up from 1.5) and it still did not work. So on a hunch I switched the RAM into different slots; this is a four slot motherboard, and the RAM was originally in the first slot and the third slot. I put them into the second and fourth slots and, bam, worked fine.
So I'm thinking it's not a RAM issue but something wrong with my motherboard... and if this is the case, did I just go and waste $100 on new RAM? Is the old RAM still fine, just a bad motherboard? And if it is a problem with the motherboard, what can I do? Obviously it's working fine right now, but if I ever want to upgrade to more RAM it'll be problematic.
These are my specs:
Motherboard: nForce 790i Ultra SLI (EVGA)
Processor: Intel Q9450
New RAM: G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
Old RAM: Patriot Viper 4GB DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
So I bought the new RAM, 4GB and two sticks. Installed both and adjusted the timings on my BIOS to the recommended settings (8-8-8-21). Blue screen of death. I took one stick out and it started up fine; I assumed it was a faulty stick of RAM. But just to check, I took the "good" stick out and put the "bad" stick back in. Worked fine. So apparently my RAM was working fine separately but not together.
My friend suggested I raise the voltage to 1.65 (up from 1.5) and it still did not work. So on a hunch I switched the RAM into different slots; this is a four slot motherboard, and the RAM was originally in the first slot and the third slot. I put them into the second and fourth slots and, bam, worked fine.
So I'm thinking it's not a RAM issue but something wrong with my motherboard... and if this is the case, did I just go and waste $100 on new RAM? Is the old RAM still fine, just a bad motherboard? And if it is a problem with the motherboard, what can I do? Obviously it's working fine right now, but if I ever want to upgrade to more RAM it'll be problematic.
These are my specs:
Motherboard: nForce 790i Ultra SLI (EVGA)
Processor: Intel Q9450
New RAM: G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
Old RAM: Patriot Viper 4GB DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)