Question One of my two RAM sticks is undetected after SSD upgrade ?

[Etna]

Hi all, hope you're having a lovely day.
Before anything else, here's the specs dump of my patient for later:

Mobo: Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Elite AX
CPU: i7-11700K
GPU: Gigabyte 3060 Ti
RAM: Crucial Ballistix [2 x 16GB] DDR4 3200mhz cl16
SSD: Crucial T500 1TB
PSU: Corsair RM650x

Some background: my computer started having stability issues with XMP quite a while ago, but i always kept the problem at bay by simply not using XMP. Any modifications i did to voltage, timings and gear did nothing. My educated guess is a bios update with some wrong timing pulled a prank.

Now, another very odd issue: after i upgraded my old Crucial P5 with a newer Crucial T500, one stick of RAM gets detected as a 0gb, unidentifiable stick of ram, which is always the stick in the DDR4_B2 slot. Try to using just one stick leads to the pc not booting at all (stuck on RAM debug led). Swapping memory sticks changes nothing. Using another kit of DDR4 memory did nothing (2x8gb, same speed).

Here's what else i did so far:
- All the basics, disassembling and reassembling everything, spraying isopropyl alcohol, checking cables, checking bent pins... nothing changed;
- flashing bios, upgrading bios with q flash plus, booting with fast boot, setting the M2A_CPU (that is the CPU linked gen4 slot) slot to Gen3 speed... nothing changed;
- installing my P5 only in the M2A_CPU gen4 slot, installing my T500 only in the same slot, installing the same drive in the M2B_SB gen3 slot (linked to the chipset): the issue starts only with the gen4 ssd in the proper gen4 slot, and with the old ssd i can boot with just one stick.

Following the block diagram of my motherboard, the issue is located somewhere in the LGA1200 CPU circuit, and after fixing nothing with a RAM swap, my main suspect for now is i either cooked the CPU or the motherboard at some point.

I'm still about to test the PSU cables with my multimeter but i HARDLY believe that less than a 10 watts more on a 3 years old, 80+ gold rated PSU are the culprit. I'm also VERY afraid to try a CPU swap right now, because if my mobo is cooked it may kick in the head any CPU.
Oh, the Intel RTS on/off button is also gone now. Don't ask me why: i'm now clueless.

Is there something obvious i am missing? Am i disabled? Thank you for reading.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

flashing bios, upgrading bios with q flash plus,
For the sake of relevance, can you state what your BIOS version is at this moment of time?
after i upgraded my old Crucial P5 with a newer Crucial T500
Did you clear the CMOS after verifying your BIOS was flashed successfully?

my main suspect for now is i either cooked the CPU or the motherboard at some point.
How would you have cooked the CPU or board? How are you cooling the processor and what is the make and model of your case?

I'm leaning on your ram kit kit being faulty or failing or that the BIOS on the motherboard is lackluster or it's merely a compatibility issue with the T500 drive in your platform. It could also be an issue with the processor managing the memory as well as the SSD on your board. Can you drop in another processor to rule out your processor being the issue?

 

[Ralston18]

This motherboard?

Gigabyte Z590 Aorus elite ax

Do verify that I found the applicable User's Manual

= = = =

PSU;

Overall use and constant peak loads are more of a factor than chronological age.

PSU could be at or nearing its' designed in EOL (End of Life). Starting to falter and fail.

FYI:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-manually-test-a-power-supply-with-a-multimeter-2626158

https://www.lifewire.com/power-supply-voltage-tolerances-2624583

Any voltages out of tolerance are going to cause problems.

 

[Etna]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

flashing bios, upgrading bios with q flash plus,
For the sake of relevance, can you state what your BIOS version is at this moment of time?
after i upgraded my old Crucial P5 with a newer Crucial T500
Did you clear the CMOS after verifying your BIOS was flashed successfully?

my main suspect for now is i either cooked the CPU or the motherboard at some point.
How would you have cooked the CPU or board? How are you cooling the processor and what is the make and model of your case?

I'm leaning on your ram kit kit being faulty or failing or that the BIOS on the motherboard is lackluster or it's merely a compatibility issue with the T500 drive in your platform. It could also be an issue with the processor managing the memory as well as the SSD on your board. Can you drop in another processor to rule out your processor being the issue?

Hi and thank you!
I have installed the F10 BIOS which is the latest on the support page. I cleared CMOS, before and after, with the jumper.

I'm Using a Noctua NH D15 cooler and a Corsair 4000D Airflow case. I'm afraid it is a cpu or a motherboard damage because this motherboard, on the optimized defaults settings, pushes the voltage and the power kinda hard. I had HWinfo detecting spikes up to 1.47 volts on Core VID kinda regularly with the out of the box setting. Sometimes i had audible VRM coil whine just by movign the mouse. It also completely ignores stock PL1 and PL2 and just gives the CPU whatever amount of power it wants.
On top of that, i also tried to do some really simple, manual tuning, mainly trying to keep an all core frequency of 5ghz with the lowest stable fixed vcore. Lately i was running the cpu on a diet by manually setting more conservatives voltages and setting manually the stock power limits (my VRM finally stopped screaming).

The second kit of RAM i tried was purchased for this troubleshooting alone but now i can also be extraordinarily unlucky.
Also this mobo should be compatible even with the higher end T700 according to Crucial.
I can do a CPU change but not now, see you in a few days for that. Should i try to snag a gen4 compatible CPU or any LGA1200 CPU is good?

This motherboard?

Gigabyte Z590 Aorus elite ax

Do verify that I found the applicable User's Manual

= = = =

PSU;

Overall use and constant peak loads are more of a factor than chronological age.

PSU could be at or nearing its' designed in EOL (End of Life). Starting to falter and fail.

FYI:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-manually-test-a-power-supply-with-a-multimeter-2626158

https://www.lifewire.com/power-supply-voltage-tolerances-2624583

Any voltages out of tolerance are going to cause problems.

Hi! Sry but the link is dead for me...
Here's the manual:

https://www.manualpdf.in/gigabyte/z590-aorus-elite-ax/manual

I will test the psu when I'm back from work, thanks!
Edit: typo

 

[Brillis Wuce]

Hi all, hope you're having a lovely day.
Before anything else, here's the specs dump of my patient for later:

- i7 11700K,
- Gigabyte Z590 Aorus elite ax,
- Crucial Ballistix 2x16gb ddr4 3200mhz cl16,
- Crucial T500 1tb,
- Gigabyte 3060 Ti,
- Corsair RM650x

Some background: my computer started having stability issues with XMP quite a while ago, but i always kept the problem at bay by simply not using XMP. Any modifications i did to voltage, timings and gear did nothing. My educated guess is a bios update with some wrong timing pulled a prank.

Now, another very odd issue: after i upgraded my old Crucial P5 with a newer Crucial T500, one stick of RAM gets detected as a 0gb, unidentifiable stick of ram, which is always the stick in the DDR4_B2 slot. Try to using just one stick leads to the pc not booting at all (stuck on RAM debug led). Swapping memory sticks changes nothing. Using another kit of DDR4 memory did nothing (2x8gb, same speed).

Here's what else i did so far:
- All the basics, disassembling and reassembling everything, spraying isopropyl alcohol, checking cables, checking bent pins... nothing changed;
- flashing bios, upgrading bios with q flash plus, booting with fast boot, setting the M2A_CPU (that is the CPU linked gen4 slot) slot to Gen3 speed... nothing changed;
- installing my P5 only in the M2A_CPU gen4 slot, installing my T500 only in the same slot, installing the same drive in the M2B_SB gen3 slot (linked to the chipset): the issue starts only with the gen4 ssd in the proper gen4 slot, and with the old ssd i can boot with just one stick.

Following the block diagram of my motherboard, the issue is located somewhere in the LGA1200 CPU circuit, and after fixing nothing with a RAM swap, my main suspect for now is i either cooked the CPU or the motherboard at some point.

I'm still about to test the PSU cables with my multimeter but i HARDLY believe that less than a 10 watts more on a 3 years old, 80+ gold rated PSU are the culprit. I'm also VERY afraid to try a CPU swap right now, because if my mobo is cooked it may kick in the head any CPU.
Oh, the Intel RTS on/off button is also gone now. Don't ask me why: i'm now clueless.

Is there something obvious i am missing? Am i disabled? Thank you for reading.

Am i disabled?
Nah, this is a weird one. I think testing the PSU is a good start, but over the course of years, I have seen a lot of motherboards with broken/defective RAM slots, or something tiny is just wedged in there. That sounds like a possibility here, especially if things have acted funny since the beginning and over multiple BIOS upgrades + RAM kits.

 

[Misgar]

one stick of RAM gets detected as a 0gb, unidentifiable stick of ram, which is always the stick in the DDR4_B2 slot.

When a known good stick of RAM (checked with MemTest86 on another computer) doesn't work in a specific memory slot (or slots), I check the following:

1). Examine the DIMM socket for bent pins, dust, debris, or foreigh objects
2). Remove CPU and check for bent contacts in the CPU socket, in the area associated with the IMC channel for the DIMM socket
3). If the CPU socket looks good, try another CPU
4). When all else fails, test the RAM and CPU on another motherboard

This assumes you have a large box full of compatible spares, or a deep wallet. Sorry.

I had one second hand board where one of the two DIMM sockets didn't work for several weeks, then it burst into life and has been fine ever since.

I've seen claims that excessive bending of some lightweight motherboards after tightening down large heatsinks causes PCB tracks to break, or disturbs the connection between the undersideof the CPU and the gold contacts inside the CPU socket.

Loosening off the cooler mounting screws by half a turn reduces the board flexibng and restores connections between CPU and socket. I have an NH-D14 in one rig and it's a fairly heavy beast. It the mobo is mounted vertially in the computer case, the weight may cause twisting of a thin board.

Crucial Ballistix 2x16gb ddr4 3200mhz cl16,

Interestingly, CPU world.com quotes:
"Supported memory: DDR4-2933, DDR4-3200"
for the 11700K.

In theory you should be OK with your 3200MT/s RAM, but as you've dioscovered, XMP overclocks aren't always 100% guaranteed.

I'm also VERY afraid to try a CPU swap right now, because if my mobo is cooked it may kick in the head any CPU.

Well in that case, get out your wallet and buy a new CPU and mobo.

If this was my PC, I'd find the cheapest compatible CPU and test it in the mobo. If it fixes the fault, you know your 11700K has gone bad.

I had HWinfo detecting spikes up to 1.47 volts on Core VID kinda regularly with the out of the box setting.

Bearing in mind 13th and 14th Gen CPUs were being hit with 1.55V spikes on a few cores during boosting, before Intel identified this as the cause of CPU degradation, 1.47V doesn't sound particularly bad. I think Intel dropped the peak voltage to 1.50V in BIOS/microcode updates on 13th/14th Gen mobos.

You have an earlier 11th Gen CPU, but you may find 1.47V spikes are perfectly normal. In any case, you really need a calibrated storage oscilloscope to get an accurate reading of transients. HWInfo, HWMonitor, Aida64, etc are reading the sensors in the CPU/mobo and are not always 100% accurate.

 

[SkyNetRising]

one stick of RAM gets detected as a 0gb, unidentifiable stick of ram, which is always the stick in the DDR4_B2 slot.
Try to using just one stick leads to the pc not booting at all (stuck on RAM debug led).
Swapping memory sticks changes nothing. Using another kit of DDR4 memory did nothing (2x8gb, same speed).

Try different ram slots.
You have to determine, if ram module is faulty or
ram slot is faulty (motherboard/cpu issue).

Your motherboard has 4 ram slots. Try them all - one by one with a known working ram module.
From your description it seems, you're just trying A2/B2 ram slots and ignoring rest of ram slots.