[SOLVED] Troubleshooting startup with Memory as culprit

May 31, 2020
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I am a new computer builder amd was troubleshooting startup issues. I narrowed my issues down to Memory being the cause of startup failure.

When I use 2 sticks startup is perfectly fine and works correctly. When I add my last 2 sticks (total four) the computer will not bootup. No display shows but lights on the mother board are still active and all parts are still recieving power. The memory sticks are all the same brand and specs. So my question is why does adding the last 2 memory sticks cause start up failure?

Other forums mentioned power issues where the power supply isn't enough. According to PC part picker my needed Watts was 388, my PSU is 450. Another forum mentioned Ram voltage being too high. My intel chip is supposed to be able to support up to 1.35V (1.412) and that's what the ram sticks are.

MSI Z390-A Pro Motherboard
Intel I7 9700k CPU
Vipersteel DDR4 2x8GB 4000MHz
 
Solution
I am a new computer builder amd was troubleshooting startup issues. I narrowed my issues down to Memory being the cause of startup failure.

When I use 2 sticks startup is perfectly fine and works correctly. When I add my last 2 sticks (total four) the computer will not bootup. No display shows but lights on the mother board are still active and all parts are still recieving power. The memory sticks are all the same brand and specs. So my question is why does adding the last 2 memory sticks cause start up failure?

Other forums mentioned power issues where the power supply isn't enough. According to PC part picker my needed Watts was 388, my PSU is 450. Another forum mentioned Ram voltage being too high. My intel chip is supposed to...

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
I am a new computer builder amd was troubleshooting startup issues. I narrowed my issues down to Memory being the cause of startup failure.

When I use 2 sticks startup is perfectly fine and works correctly. When I add my last 2 sticks (total four) the computer will not bootup. No display shows but lights on the mother board are still active and all parts are still recieving power. The memory sticks are all the same brand and specs. So my question is why does adding the last 2 memory sticks cause start up failure?

Other forums mentioned power issues where the power supply isn't enough. According to PC part picker my needed Watts was 388, my PSU is 450. Another forum mentioned Ram voltage being too high. My intel chip is supposed to be able to support up to 1.35V (1.412) and that's what the ram sticks are.

MSI Z390-A Pro Motherboard
Intel I7 9700k CPU
Vipersteel DDR4 2x8GB 4000MHz
Vendors sell "matched sets" for a reason. The two (or four) DIMMs are guaranteed to work as a set. Buying two sets "of the same thing" has no guarantee of working together, especially if you are trying to reach extreme clock speeds like 4000Mhz.
You can try doing a RAM reset to default and see if all 4 DIMMs will behave at 2133/2666. You can try adding 0.02 or 0.05V to the DRAM voltage.
But there is no guarantee you will EVER get these to work.
 
Solution

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
Might need to manually set VCCSA/VCCIO 0.05v to 0.1v higher than stock (don't exceed 1.2v). Also probably need to bump dram voltage 0.05v-0.15v as needed.

Working with 4x sticks is harder on the memory controller than working with 2x sticks, regardless of whether the ram actually will play nice or not.

DDR4 can go as high as 1.5v, but that's only under extreme speeds like 4GHz+ ram at 32Gb size etc. But I would suggest removing xmp profile and saving that in bios as default, then try adding the new sticks and adjusting voltages as needed. Starting out with xmp is trying to make 2 dissimilar kits use the higher settings, which doesn't always work as intended.
 
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