Bought another stick, not working with others

[Troyathy]

I bought a triple kit about three years ago of Mushkin Enhanced SIlverline. I did a general upgrade of my hardware a few months which included a new motherboard, processor, hard drive, and an additional stick of RAM. The system made a habit of freezing up roughly ten minutes after booting. After trying loads of different troubleshooting, I determined that it is because of the new stick or RAM. I ran memtest86+ (v4.20) with every combination and it passed every one. For whatever reason, the new stick is causing issues. My system is running smoothly without it (which confuses me because I could have sworn that I tried taking out that stick of RAM when the problem first came about months ago, but regardless it works now). I had assumed that the same product line with the same speed and size would work, but it clearly isn't. So, basically I'm asking if despite all the specs being the same, is there no way for this new RAM to work with the "old"?

Original Kit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226096

New Addition: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226094

 

[Alec Mowat]

The specs are the same, however DDR3 can be super finicky when it's mixed.

I'd test by removing two pairs and testing them, than trying two other pairs.

The first kit was for a Tripple Channel CPU though. You have a Dual Channel board I imagine.

Make sure the BIOS settings are using a profile and setting itself up incorrectly, especially voltage.

 

[Gee Bee]

It maybe the dual channel aspects of the new build, with two sticks matched and two not.
I to would have thought it shouldn't make a difference, but obviously it does.

 

[Troyathy]

The specs are the same, however DDR3 can be super finicky when it's mixed.

I'd test by removing two pairs and testing them, than trying two other pairs.

The first kit was for a Tripple Channel CPU though. You have a Dual Channel board I imagine.

Make sure the BIOS settings are using a profile and setting itself up incorrectly, especially voltage.

After some quick research, I was under the impression that triple channel was just meant that it was three sticks of RAM, basically just for marketing. Does it actually make a difference with the hardware?

And the BIOS seem to be recognizing everything correctly. I don't know a whole lot about the deeper settings of BIOS though. And my board is an ASUS m5a97 r2.0.

 

[Alec Mowat]

The specs are the same, however DDR3 can be super finicky when it's mixed.

I'd test by removing two pairs and testing them, than trying two other pairs.

The first kit was for a Tripple Channel CPU though. You have a Dual Channel board I imagine.

Make sure the BIOS settings are using a profile and setting itself up incorrectly, especially voltage.

After some quick research, I was under the impression that triple channel was just meant that it was three sticks of RAM, basically just for marketing. Does it actually make a difference with the hardware?

And the BIOS seem to be recognizing everything correctly. I don't know a whole lot about the deeper settings of BIOS though. And my board is an ASUS m5a97 r2.0.

Triple Channel is for the 6 and 12 core Intel chips. Instead of two pairs of RAM slots, they have 3 pairs.
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_X58/#specifications

It does make a difference in performance, and it does try to pair up the RAM. With 3 sticks, it will switch to single channel mode.

I would remove the third stick and benchmark to confirm stability. You'll basically need to trial and error and see if you can get it to work.

If it's EUFI, just switch to advanced mode and there should be a setting for the RAM profile, or XMB profile

 

[Gee Bee]

Try a cmos reset and on boot to bios, make only the required adjustments for now.

 

[Troyathy]

Yeah, I understand how to use the BIOS. The automatic settings seem to have all the correct timing settings and voltage settings. But I have them set to auto and I'll see if any of that changes with one, two, or four sticks and make adjustments if necessary and hope for the best. Thanks for sure.