Question Troubleshooting faulty RAM/MOBO ?

[Wichilie]

Hey,

Over the past few months I've been having an issue where about once every 2-4 weeks my PC wouldn't turn on; no lights or fans, nothing. If I waited for a few hours it would suddenly work fine again. Recently however it refused to turn on for several days, and once it eventually did, kept bluescreening after a couple of minutes in Windows (usually IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL but it varied). Suspecting a memory problem I ran MemTest86 which indeed spat out many errors. The weird thing is that after some more testing I found out that this is not consistent; if I take out the sticks and put them back in, I will either get a ton of errors instantly or none over the entire testing run. I haven't been able to identify a specific slot or stick that could maybe be the culprate.

My question is, does anyone know what to make of this? Something is definitely faulty, but I'm not sure whether it's the RAM or motherboard. If anyone has any advice on tests I can run to narrow down the problem I'd be very grateful.

(P.S. Unfortunately I don't have access to a different RAM set to see if it does work with that.)

Here's my build:

AMD Ryzen 5 7600
Kingston Fury Beast KF560C36BBEK2-16 (2x 8GB)
Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X X3 OC
ASRock B650M PG Riptide
XFX XTR 650 W

 

[DaleH]

Hey,

Over the past few months I've been having an issue where about once every 2-4 weeks my PC wouldn't turn on; no lights or fans, nothing. If I waited for a few hours it would suddenly work fine again. Recently however it refused to turn on for several days, and once it eventually did, kept bluescreening after a couple of minutes in Windows (usually IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL but it varied). Suspecting a memory problem I ran MemTest86 which indeed spat out many errors. The weird thing is that after some more testing I found out that this is not consistent; if I take out the sticks and put them back in, I will either get a ton of errors instantly or none over the entire testing run. I haven't been able to identify a specific slot or stick that could maybe be the culprate.

My question is, does anyone know what to make of this? Something is definitely faulty, but I'm not sure whether it's the RAM or motherboard. If anyone has any advice on tests I can run to narrow down the problem I'd be very grateful.

(P.S. Unfortunately I don't have access to a different RAM set to see if it does work with that.)

Here's my build:

I'm thinking the memory would not stop the fans from coming on - the power supply might.

 

[Misgar]

The Memtest results appear to indicate you have a memory problem so I can only think of 3 options:

1). Disable any XMP memory overclocks.
2). Run Memtest with only one DIMM installed. Repeat for the other DIMM in isolation. Discard any RAM that repeatedly fails Memtest.
3). Obtain replacement memory.

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL can have many causes:
https://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-10/how-to-fix-an-irql_not_less_or_equal-bsod/

 

[Wichilie]

I'm thinking the memory would not stop the fans from coming on - the power supply might.

Hmm, good point. Could that be the culprit even though when the pc did boot there were no further problems? (It never turned off or BSOD'd while running, until very recently.)

 

[Wichilie]

2). Run Memtest with only one DIMM installed. Repeat for the other DIMM in isolation. Discard any RAM that repeatedly fails Memtest.

Unfortunately the results appeared to be inconsistent; when I thought I had found a faulty stick it would suddenly do fine on (multiple) subsequent runs. That's what made me unsure about whether it's a RAM or motherboard (slot) issue. The motherboard being faulty miiight also explain why it wouldn't boot sometimes, as DaleH pointed out RAM would probably not stop the fans from coming on. But maybe it does haha, I'm not sure. If anyone knows I'd like to hear.