Mushkin Silverline and ASUS M5A99FX - OC Fails at boot after blue screen

[element6]

System:

• 
  ■SeaSonic S12G-650 PSU
  ■Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0
  ■AMD FX-8350 Black Edition
  ■Arctic Freezer Heatsink
  ■Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600) 9-9-9-24 Model 997018 - 2 kits (4 DIMMS - 32GB Total)
  ■MSI R9 270x 2GB
  ■Pioneer BDR-209DBK
  ■Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD (boot)
  ■IBM M5210 PCIe RAID Controller (nearly identical to an LSI MegaRAID 9361-8i) with 2GB cache and 1 logical drive (30TB RAID 5 - 6x6TB WD60EFRX)

Everything was working fine for the past two weeks until earlier tonight. System bluescreened and when I got to it, it showed memory dump progress at 105% and was just frozen there.. it crashed yesterday too at some point when I walked away but had restarted itself.

I can't boot the system to any OS unless my memory gets the right amount of voltage. When I clear all BIOS to optimized or factory defaults, it drops my actual memory voltage down to something like 1.488v on the reading. It shows that it's applying 1.5v but the reading shows 1.488v.
So here's what I did from the factory defaults in BIOS:

■Set Ai Overclock tuner to Manual so I can change other values
■Set Memory Frequency to DDR3-1333MHz
■DRAM Timing Control -> Set timing to 9-9-9-24 and left everything else on Auto
■Scrolled down to DRAM Voltage and upped it to 1.51000 from Auto (Auto left it at 1.488V)

That's it! That's all I did - and it was running great. I was able to install my OS and the PC ran stable for 2 weeks. But now, it won't even boot to the BIOS splash screen after I enable those same settings.
I will power it off when it tries to boot with those settings (won't show BIOS splash screen - just sits there) and when I power it back on, I get the lovely "Overclocking failed! Please enter Setup to re-configure your system."

So, where do I go from here?

I have a feeling my RAM of choice is junk.. either that or this system board isn't that great. My main worry at this point though is, have I done damage to either the voltage controller on the board or the RAM itself?

 

[i7Baby]

There's a fair chance that the two separate kits aren't compatible. Pull one out and try it.

Any particular reason for 32GB?

 

[element6]

There's a fair chance that the two separate kits aren't compatible. Pull one out and try it.

Any particular reason for 32GB?

VM's for work and ASTER (multiseat Windows 7)

I pulled one of the kits, loaded optimized defaults after system powered on, saved to BIOS and rebooted, then re-entered BIOS and changed my timing and voltage settings again so I could boot into the OS. It booted to the OS successfully for the first time tonight now, but completely froze without any blue screen after a minute or two of being logged in to Win7. I think I had memory voltage set to 1.51500 before.. I saw at 1.51000 it was flickering the actual voltage reading down to 1.494v at times. So I just went back in and set it to 1.51500 again.

Booted it up after 1.51500 and everything seemed to be running fine. Left Windows 7 run for about 20 minutes. System was completely responsive. So I gave it a nice, clean shutdown, then tried to power it back on. Nothing. Neither screen came one (no signal). It did this after the frozen bluescreen I found it at earlier.

Powered system off by holding the power button, flipped the power switch off on PSU, and unplugged. Left system unplugged for a minute, plugged back in, powered on. Now we're back to overclocking failed. Yes, right back where I started with only one kit.

 

[i7Baby]

Run Memtest on the ram.

 

[element6]

I will run memtest tomorrow, but I don't think the RAM itself is to blame.

Opened a ticket with ASUS. System board is acting way too messed up.

I was able to bring the system into the OS twice after the bluescreen earlier. Each time it took several attempts to make the thing boot all the way up. Either I couldn't even get into the BIOS because I'd get no display output, or it would tell me that overclocking failed and I'd have to keep unplugging it and trying to get into BIOS to change the settings to optimized defaults and then setting the correct timing and voltage values over and over again.

Many times, it wouldn't even get to the primary boot device. It would go past my RAID controller BIOS, then I'd catch a quick flicker of the ASUS splash logo again for some odd reason, then I'd be left with an infinite blinking cursor. There's nothing wrong with my SSD OS drive. This motherboard is all over the place with it's POST and boot behavior.

 

[i7Baby]

Try a ram stick that you know works in each slot. See if its just one DIMM that's faulty.

 

[Tradesman1]

Mixing DRAM is never a good idea, even if identical sets, with what you have the MC is being pushed with 32GB so try raising the DRAM voltage to 1.57 and raise the CPU/NB voltage to 1.3

 

[element6]

Mixing DRAM is never a good idea, even if identical sets, with what you have the MC is being pushed with 32GB so try raising the DRAM voltage to 1.57 and raise the CPU/NB voltage to 1.3

Guys, thanks for all the replys and help. I was really busy last week but I ran memtest and I'm pretty sure I've isolated the issue.

I ran memtest on the one pair of DIMMs not too long ago and both passed with flying colors. They were in a different system board at the time though. When I moved to the ASUS board I bought a second Mushkin kit because I knew I'd need more RAM. I trust RAM too much sometimes I guess.

As I tested each stick individually, overnight, the first pair passed without a single error once again. Once I put the second pair in (one stick at a time again) it was obvious I had problems. One of the sticks gave me beep codes and the system wouldn't even power on. After I gave up on that one and put the other stick in, the system came up with the overclocking failed error and that funky behavior that it was exhibiting before.

I went back to optimized defaults once again, rebooted, and then set my memory settings again and ran memtest on the last DIMM (the other one in that new kit). It threw three errors on the first pass.

DOA RAM. I contacted Mushkin and sent it in on an RMA last week.

I'm surprised the system ran fairly stable for two weeks. For now I've been running just the two sticks of RAM that passed all tests in memtest and haven't had a single issue lately. I'll report back if there are any further issues but I think it's safe to blame DOA RAM on this issue.

Thanks!

 

[Tradesman1]

Glad you found the problem 😉

 

[i7Baby]

DOA RAM. I contacted Mushkin and sent it in on an RMA last week. - when the replacement comes back, again you'll have 2 sets of ram. If you install it and there's a problem then sell the ram and save up for a 32gb kit. That's if you really need 32gb.

 

[element6]

When the replacement comes back, again you'll have 2 sets of ram. If you install it and there's a problem then sell the ram and save up for a 32gb kit. That's if you really need 32gb.

Yep. If they won't play nice together, I will just buy a nicely reviewed 1600Mhz 4x8GB kit.
Thanks again