memtest fails with every stick in every slot?

[kooper]

Hey guys, have an issue with an old PC here (P5N-D ASUS motherboard)

PC started to see random BSOD so I decided to run memtest which failed. took out all the RAM and tested one stick at a time in each slot. I consistently got errors or memtest would crash. Memtest passed twice with one stick in two different slots, but all the other sticks failed in every slot. Went back to the stick that worked and tested it again in the slot that worked and it failed.

Any idea what could be the issue here? I don't think every stick of ram or every slot is bad, no? Could it be the CPU or the motherboard? Is there anyway I can diagnose it further?

Thanks

 

[Shaun o]

Give the memory slots of the board a good dusting or cleaning with a small dry paint brush.

If you can get old of some ethanol, or screen cleaning liquid of about 100% alcohol content.
Get a bit of toilet paper, and soak it in the cleaner.
Then run it over each memory slot on the board and clean the gold contacts of the inside of each slot.

Run the soaked toilet paper over each of the memory sticks on the gold fingers of each. do both sides.
Give it about 10 minuets for the alcohol to evaporate fully and test the memory again.

If it still fails to read the memory properly without errors.
You next want to take the cooler of the Cpu, unlatch the locking arm of the cpu socket. check the underside of the cpu for any damaged pins or look for any damage to the gold wafers of the cpu socket. depending on the cpu type and what socket the board has it will be a pin array or LGA array of the cpu socket. you can also if an LGA cpu clean the landing pads on the underside of the Intel based cpu.

If all seem fine then put it back together.

What it would point to is that the memory controller of the motherboard it`s self is faulty in some way. Sadly there is no way of fixing it unless you know what you are looking at and good at replacing electronic components, or chip sets of motherboards.

 

[kooper]

Give the memory slots of the board a good dusting or cleaning with a small dry paint brush.

If you can get old of some ethanol, or screen cleaning liquid of about 100% alcohol content.
Get a bit of toilet paper, and soak it in the cleaner.
Then run it over each memory slot on the board and clean the gold contacts of the inside of each slot.

Run the soaked toilet paper over each of the memory sticks on the gold fingers of each. do both sides.
Give it about 10 minuets for the alcohol to evaporate fully and test the memory again.

If it still fails to read the memory properly without errors.
You next want to take the cooler of the Cpu, unlatch the locking arm of the cpu socket. check the underside of the cpu for any damaged pins or look for any damage to the gold wafers of the cpu socket. depending on the cpu type and what socket the board has it will be a pin array or LGA array of the cpu socket. you can also if an LGA cpu clean the landing pads on the underside of the Intel based cpu.

If all seem fine then put it back together.

What it would point to is that the memory controller of the motherboard it`s self is faulty in some way. Sadly there is no way of fixing it unless you know what you are looking at and good at replacing electronic components, or chip sets of motherboards.

Well, the CPU and memory up to the point where the BSODs would occur had not been touched. I would assume that the CPU is fine as within it's lifetime it has not been touched.

Same for the RAM which had not been tampered with until the BSODs started to occur.

I would lean more towards an issue with the motherboard myself as you pointed out, I feel that may be the most logical conclusion. Just wanted to see what others thought of the situation. Thank you for your feedback.

 

[basroil]

Another issue might be the speed/timing/voltage of the memory in question. I assume you've tried with default parameters and XMP?

 

[kooper]

Another issue might be the speed/timing/voltage of the memory in question. I assume you've tried with default parameters and XMP?

Yeah none of these settings were ever changed and are the defaults.

 

[basroil]

Another issue might be the speed/timing/voltage of the memory in question. I assume you've tried with default parameters and XMP?

Yeah none of these settings were ever changed and are the defaults.

Could be that the voltage is dropping/ "resistance" increasing, which is why I asked. Sometimes boosting voltage a tiny bit can help, assuming you aren't running above the maximum already.