[SOLVED] No Display with multiple RAM sticks. 1 stick works fine

themrsomedude456

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Jan 2, 2013
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A couple of weeks ago, I restarted my PC (it was working fine before all of this), and got a black screen when it tried to boot back up. After trying to figure out what the problem was, I determined it was the RAM. I could boot from dual channel in the A1 and B1 slot of my board, but nothing more than that. Single channel worked too. I pretty much left it like this as I couldn't find a way to run all of my RAM without the PC not booting. So I have been running 16gb RAM (2x 8gb sticks) in the A1 and B1 slot of my motherboard for a couple weeks now. I just stored the other two RAM sticks away and did not use them.

Fast forward to today, my PC black screened again. I could get it to boot on 1 stick of RAM but that's it. I then tested every slot with all 4 of my RAM sticks, and they all managed to boot when on their own, no matter what DIMM. So I think the RAM is fine. Next I tried dual channel. I couldn't get my original A1 and B1 setup to work, but A2 and B2 did boot (this is what the motherboard manual recommends), however it only recognises 1 stick in the B2 DIMM. I removed the B2 RAM stick to see if it would launch with the A2 it failed to recognise and it did. I then put the stick back into the B2 slot, and sure enough, it doesn't recognise the RAM in the A2 slot, but does recognise the B2.

At this point I tried a couple things. I did a CMOS reset, that did not fix the problem. I reseated the CPU (checked for any bent pins, they all look fine), that did not fix the problem. I then tried enabled D.C.O.P and reducing the RAM speed back down to 2133mhz (D.C.O.P sets it to 2933mhz) and this did make some effect. The motherboard would still say only the B2 slot was recognised, but the system memory was 16GB, so the A2 RAM stick is doing something. It boots to Windows fine. However after playing around with D.C.O.P, I can't get it to work with more that dual channel. Also, the D.C.O.P 2133mhz setting doesn't work all the time, and will only recognise the B2 RAM slot and the system memory is 8GB. It is intermittent.

This is where I am at now, I am sure that all my RAM sticks work ok, and that it is probably a motherboard problem. But before buying a new motherboard, if anyone has any suggestions for possible fixes, it would be greatly appreciated.

Specs:
AMD Ryzen 1700x
Corsair Vengeance 3200mhz
ASUS Prime x370 Pro
Corsair RM650 PSU
RTX 2080Ti
 
Last edited:
Solution
If you haven't updated the BIOS, I'd start with that. First-gen Ryzen platforms and CPUs had notoriously flaky memory support especially with earlier AGESA firmware.

themrsomedude456

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The BIOS is up to date. I updated it when the issue first occured. It didn't fix the issue. I know about the memory issues with 1st gen Ryzen first hand with trying to get my ram to run at 3000mhz. I had to settle for 2666mhz for a while until after a few BIOS updates I managed to increase it. Would a new motherboard (probably a B450) help with these issues? Or is that just down to the CPU?
 

themrsomedude456

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I have purchased a new CPU and motherboard as I think one of them were causing the issue. I went for Ryzen 5800x and an ASUS x570 mobo. The new CPU and motherboard are working fine with the old set of RAM. Thanks for the help.
 

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