Question Am I having motherboard issues or ram issues?

[Neversmores]

Hello!

I built a PC about a year and half ago, and everything's been going well with it up until about a few months ago.

At the start of the year, I decided to upgrade the RAM inside the machine with a set of Corsair Vengeance DDR5 5600 MHz. I bought two packs of two 16 GB sticks (total of 64GB), and installed all of them into my computer, after which, I kept getting memory errors and blue screens of deaths (normally, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL).

The main pain for me was constant crashing in FFXIV, which caused me to run a memtest86. I had a bunch of errors and I RMA'd the problem RAM. I ran with the other set of sticks for about 3 months before getting a replacement and putting the new replacement in. During this time, I had no blue screens, no errors or anything.

I finally got off my butt and put in the replacement RAM Corsair had sent back on Friday, and everything came back to haunt me. Memory errors, constant crashing in FFXIV, blue screens (this time, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED).

I took the replacement RAM out, but the problem continued to persist. What weirded me out this time was that the old set of RAM that's been in my computer for the last three months started failing now instead. I took them out, and I'm running the replacement set Corsair sent only and everything's back to normal. Is this possibly a motherboard issue, or did I make a mistake in my RAM that caused a long term issue?

Thanks for the help!

MOBO: Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master
CPU: Intel i9-12900k
GPU: Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3080 Ti Xtreme Waterforce
SSD: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB
PSU: Asus ROG Thor 1200W

 

[Lafong]

Did you deliberately reject buying a new kit of 64, composed of 2 x 32?

 

[Neversmores]

Honestly, at this point, I can't really remember why I didn't grab a 2x32. Mostly worried that if I went with 2x32 now, would it also just fail?

 

[Lafong]

Honestly, at this point, I can't really remember why I didn't grab a 2x32. Mostly worried that if I went with 2x32 now, would it also just fail?

Well............RAM slots can go bad at any time.

Don't know if that is the case with you, but I'd certainly try to trial and error my way with the sticks you now have to confirm whether any slots have failed.

But I don't think you can ever be guaranteed that 4 sticks from 2 kits are fully compatible.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Honestly, at this point, I can't really remember why I didn't grab a 2x32. Mostly worried that if I went with 2x32 now, would it also just fail?

Ram modules are sold in kits for a reason.
With mixing two kits of 2x16GB, you introduce possible compatibility problems.
Those separate kits are not tested for working together.

Also on dual channel board 4ram modules often have problems with operating at max rated OC frequencies,
even if with 2 modules they run just fine.

So getting 2x32GB kit - is safest course of action.

Or you can fiddle with ram parameters and overclocking manually in BIOS (latencies, ddr voltage, command rate, frequency).
Overclocking is not guarantied and results will vary .

 

[Neversmores]

Thank you all! I'll try out the different slots first. Then look into a 2x32 GB kit and give my current kits to some friends and family.