Games crashing after I've installed new RAM

[tony.fuksa]

Hello,
I've gotta ask for an advice. I recently bought a new RAM and sold the old one, but since I've done that, games I used to play are crashing.. I had no problem with my last RAM, but I thought I am making an upgrade..

My setup is :
AMD Ryzen 2600X
MSI GeForce GTX 1060 ARMOR 6G OCV1
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-X470-AORUS ULTRA GAMING
Power supply Seasonic Focus Plus Platinum - 650W

RAM I used to have (now sold) - Kingston HyperX Fury 8GB 2400MHz DDR4 CL15 - 1x

And now I've bought - G.Skill Flare X AMD DDR4 16GB (2x8GB) 3200MHz CL14 1.35V XMP 2.0 - which is the only RAM in my PC now

PC is running fine, the games are also running great, without any FPS drops or anything. All benchmarks finish, I have even checked my RAM for errors with memtest86 .. But once in a while the games just crash. I've tryed to play Far Cry 4, Wolfenstein II ("cannot write crash dump" and blue screen of death), Quake Champions and even CS:GO - all have crashed at some point.

I have tryed
- enable XMP profile, disable XMP profile, manually set latency and voltage
- check my PCs power plan for - High Performance
- updated chipset
- updated BIOS (F3b version)
- change RAM slots (tryed DDR1+DDR2 and also DDR3+DDR4)

I wasn't playing with any of the BIOS settings since I mostly have no idea what they mean, so the only thing I have tryed to change was the manual setting of latency and voltage..Everything with the same result.

Can you please help me and tell me if Im missing anything?

Thank you very much for any response ..

 

[gskill support]

Did you memtest with one module at a time? What version did you use? (Make sure it is designed for DDR4)

Which slots are you using? Should be 2 and 4 away from the CPU.

 

[tony.fuksa]

Thank you for your reply!

I haven´t tryed memtest with single RAM and as I can see there are two memtests available and I have tryed only memtest86. I´ll try memtest64 with double and single RAMs connected once I get home.

Second thing I am going to try is switching the RAM slots, I am not sure if I made a mistake there. I have tryed pluging RAMs like in this video around 2:30 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRLoS1YE7Ew

So the slots that are labeled DDR4_1 and DDR4_2 on the motherboard .. Have you meant these? Those are the second and fourth slot away from CPU.

One thing I am going to try once I get home is if this problem persists when I connect only one of the two RAMs.

Anyway, thank you again for your reply, I will post an update once I'll try everything ..

 

[tony.fuksa]

So .. I am not completely sure yet, because I had only few hours to tests, but .. I guess it's an issue with Dual memory channels on Gigabyte GA-X470-AORUS ULTRA GAMING motherboard.

First thing I've tryed was to plug RAM sticks into slots - DDR4_3 + DDR4_4
- (from user manual to motherboard - " The four memory sockets are divided into two channels and each channel has two memory sockets as following:
Channel A: DDR4_2, DDR4_4
Channel B: DDR4_1, DDR4_3")
- Wolfenstein II crashed once with "cannot write crash dump" and then it crashed second time, restarting the whole PC

Then I have tryed to play and run Novabench with just ONE RAM stick at a time and everything was running OK, without any sort of crash for about an hour. (I usually crashed games in 10-15min).

Then I have tryed again to plug in RAM sticks into slots 3 and 4 and ... everything was OK for about hour or two .. I was running 3Dmark several times, Novabench, played Wolfenstein II without any issues.

But then .. when I almost got excited, I've started memtest64 and after about 5min of testing a BSOD appeared and I had to hard reset my PC.

It seems a lot like this issue - https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/8ge3ac/dualchannel_ram_issue_with_new_gigabyte_x470/
- almost the same specs, same issue ..

Maybe I need to buy a different motherboard .. Or do you have any other suggestions?

Thank you for any replies ..

 

[gskill support]

Try another memtest like Windows or HCI Design to see what results you get.

Did you test both modules individually and they worked fine?

 

[tony.fuksa]

So I have tryed both modules - one by one in slot DDR4_1 - both worked fine and Memtest86 (ver. 7.5) was completed on both modules without any errors .. Same goes for Windows memory test - twice without any errors.

Then I have tryed to plug in one more module to slot "DDR4_2" (which, according to MB manual, is for dual channel) and ran the tests. Memtest86 was working for hours and the result was - NO ERRORS.
After this test I have also tryed windows memory test and it was working for an hour or so and then stopped working at 10% completition. I have waited for an hour and since it hasn't progressed from 10% I've decieded that it crashed.

Now, do you think it's hardware issue or software issue? I have a feeling that it's software (maybe Win10) causing the problems .. Ever since I've removed Win 10 "out of the equasion" no errors occured ..

What do you think?

Thank you for any replies

 

[gskill support]

Did you try the second module by itself to see if it can work fine like the first one? You may need to have the modules replaced to see if a new kit works better.

 

[tony.fuksa]

I am sorry for the delay in my answer but I had no time to do more tests ..

To answer your question - yes, I did

I reinstalled Windows and the memory is working in dual channel (in both pairs of slots) without any issues .. until I turn on XMP and try to get the memory frequency to 3200Mhz .. Then the crashing starts again ..

I am not sure why, but it seems that my PC have a problem handling XMP. I thought my Ryzen 2600x and Gigabyte AORUS MB with x470 chipset can handle it ..

Any suggestions will be welcomed, thank you

 

[gskill support]

Manually set the DRAM Frequency to 3066 or 2933 to see if it can improve stability.

Increasing the SoC Voltage may help stabilize the CPU memory controller. With some more testing we can determine which part is the limiting hardware.

 

[tony.fuksa]

So I have tryed increasing memory frequency and it seemed stable, but then the pc crashed eventually. Btw. what timings should I use?

Can you read from these screenshots what my SoC Voltage is? I think it's about 0,8V, but correct me if I am wrong ..
https://imgur.com/a/rDeSOSP - CPU-Z
https://imgur.com/a/ENmxgaZ - HWiNFO

Unfortunately I dont see an option in my BIOS, that allows me to change manually the SoC Voltage. There is only option with an offset, which I can boost for up to +0.300V. I am not sure how this offset works, because it seems that it has no effect on any of the stats I have found in CPU-Z or HWiNFO. Do you know what value I should set and will be safe?

I am starting to think that the best solution would be to buy a new motherboard, try it and possibly change it for current one. If the problem persists, I am going to try new RAM sticks ..

 

[gskill support]

I suggest sending the memory in for RMA exchange to see if a new kit can work better:

http://www.gskill.com/en/rma

 

[tony.fuksa]

I suggest sending the memory in for RMA exchange to see if a new kit can work better:

http://www.gskill.com/en/rma

Actually it seems, that i finally solved this issue.
I’ve bought a different motherboard (msi x470 pro carbon), did some testing and my setup with XMP on 3200MHz is finally stable.

Now I am able to run Prime95 forever without a single crash. (My PC crashed or resulted in errors after few minutes with Gigabyte mobo)

Thank you for your help and care. I appriciate it a lot!