Question System crash and now will only work with just one memory stick.

[LeadHead01]

Gigabyte GA-A320m-s2h rev 1.x
AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 3.6ghz w/on board graphic chip
NVIDIA QUADRO FX 3800 graphics card
G.Skill FlareX DDR4 3200 8GB’s each (2 total )
Power supply: Corsair CX430 Model 001666
Win10 64bit

While watching a You Tube video my desktop crashed into plain blue screens and the only way to shut it down was to turn off the main power. On trying to power it back up, no reboot/POST, fans came on running really fast, and stayed that way. On a normal boot up they come on fast then slow the minute the system begins to boot. Again the only way to turn it off was the main power button, holding the on/off had no effect. So I pulled the vid card and ran one monitor straight to the mother board and again no boot. Next I pulled one stick of RAM and it booted right back up. Pulled that stick out and put the other one in and back to no boot. Moved that same stick to the other slot and still nothing. Put the “good” stick back in and put my video card in and everything runs fine. To test things, I moved the good stick to the other slot just to see what would happen and it worked fine.

I then updated my BIOS to the latest and that didn’t help. I pulled the battery to reset the CMOS, still only the one stick would work. Thinking I had one bad module, I borrowed 3 matching sets (6 sticks) of DDR4 Ram and tried them single, double and every combination you can do and again no attempt to boot up. I put the one working stick in and back to working perfect.

This seems very odd that only one stick of RAM will allow my desktop to function now. I’m baffled. This system has been running perfect for 3 years.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Is only one STICK working, or is only one SLOT working? Try each stick separately in the DDR4_1 slot, to ensure both of them work individually in that slot. Then do the same thing in the DDR4_2 slot.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So you are saying that out of 8 sticks of RAM, ONLY the single stick from your original kit works? And that it works regardless of which slot you put it in?

Also, what is your exact power supply model number?

 

[LeadHead01]

So you are saying that out of 8 sticks of RAM, ONLY the single stick from your original kit works? And that it works regardless of which slot you put it in?

Yes, only the one stick works from my original matching set. It works in either slot. ( MB has only 2 slots)
The other original will not work in either slot nor will the other 6 I borrowed.

Also, what is your exact power supply model number?

Corsair CX430
Model 001666

Thanks!

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, that's an EXTREMELY poor quality power supply AND hasn't been manufactured for many years which means it has to be pretty damn old as well on top of being poor quality even when it was new. We've seen literally hundreds and hundreds of cases where a CX430 or CX600 caused anything from minor errors to system shut downs to letting out a lot of the magic smoke, so to speak. I'd REALLY recommend that you start by replacing that with a quality unit. Very hard to even try and determine if there is something else going on without knowing you have a proven good quality, fully working power supply installed.

You might, MIGHT, even be able to eliminate it as strictly a memory problem by installing one of the other memory modules in the DDR4_1 slot and then doing a hard reset of the BIOS. I suspect your system might not be renewing the hardware tables after you change DIMMs AND it's equally possible that your PSU is stretched to it's limits and while it works, barely, with a single stick installed, installing a second stick is just enough to cause some instability or outright refusal to POST. In either case, that's where I'd start as anything else is probably just chasing ghosts without knowing for certain that the PSU isn't the problem.

 

[LeadHead01]

Thanks for your help. When I built this system, I added up the consumption and that PSU covered everything and then some. You mentioning it’s a poor quality is new information. I did build on a budget so…

But for 3 years I haven’t had one issue with this build. It’s done everything I have needed. Trying to wrap my head around how a PSU and my system only recognizing one stick of memory. And when I say one stick. I literally mean one stick. I just want to be clear that 7 other mods of RAM would not boot me back up. I tried each one in both slots and all I get are fans running WFO. But that one original 8Gb’s or RAM works fine. If I put the other matching RAM back in either with the good one or by itself, nothing but fans running, no boot.

Not sure how to do a hard reset of the BIOS but I did upgrade it to the current one and that didn't help.

 

[Darkbreeze]

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the BIOS to fully reset and force recreation of the hardware tables.



Try that, between each stick. If you can't get ANY other stick to work by itself at default settings then there is either a problem with the CPU or the motherboard, although, a weak or faulty PSU can make it LOOK like ANY problem that could happen with a system since ALL components rely on the PSU. It does not seem likely however for that to be the case when only 1 out of 8 DIMMs is working.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Might also want to pull the graphics card and just run off the integrated graphics from the CPU through the motherboard outputs, just to see if perhaps something related to the graphics card is contributing to the problem as well.

 

[LeadHead01]

To put a pin in this one.. I finally just broke down and bought 2 new sticks of RAM and installed. System is running fine. Why all the other RAM I tried didn't work is bizarre. I did have a friend test the problematic stick of RAM and it failed. So looks like my entire problem was just that one stick.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Which is weird since you PREVIOUSLY said that only ONE stick worked and the other 7 modules wouldn't.

Trying to wrap my head around how a PSU and my system only recognizing one stick of memory. And when I say one stick. I literally mean one stick. I just want to be clear that 7 other mods of RAM would not boot me back up.

 

[LeadHead01]

I had this same question posted at another site and I mentioned I had researched the RAM sticks I borrowed and I found out they were for severs.. Somebody recently replied back and said server RAM is ECC while a PC uses non-ECC so that might have been why none of the borrowed RAM would work. It's running fine with new RAM I bought in it now.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes. ECC memory will only work in a system that has a board AND a CPU that support ECC memory. Some of them, motherboards and processors, support both, while others only support one or the other. So if you borrowed ECC memory to use on an A320 chipset motherboard, it is no wonder at all that they wouldn't work. It's definitely a good thing to know.

While there is some crossover these days, for the most part ECC memory only works in server, some workstation and high end desktop (HEDT) type platforms, and many of those REQUIRE ECC memory. It has become more common though for some of the consumer platforms to support both consumer type memory AND ECC memory, depending on the model and CPU being used.

Glad it's working now though, that is the most important thing.