Question What killed my ram sticks?

[JoopJohnson]

Mobo: MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4
CPU: Alder Lake i7-12700k
Ram: CORSAIR Vengeance RGB RS (16GB sticks) DDR4 3600
GPU: Gigabyte AORUS Gefore RTX 3080 Master
PSU: EVGA Supernova 1200X P2

Entire build is less than 1 month old with less than three days of uptime. Had all 4 sticks running just fine no issues. Everything could see I had 64GB of ram and life was great. I decided to enable XMP profile (just to the advertised speeds of 3600), played some Starcraft 2, it crashed, so I turned off XMP, played more Starcraft 2 and was fine for the next couple hours of game time. Figured to myself that I just wont mess with XMP anymore. Then the next day on boot-up I get a warning about my ram being in non-optimized slots. I think that's odd and check BIOS, sure enough it only sees A1 and B2.

I take the ram out and do all the tests I know. Check each stick in B2, two of them work. Check a working stick in each slot, and they all post. So why is it that my ram in A2 and B1 died so strangely and suddenly? If it was a channel issue you would think it would of only killed A or B, if it was a Motherboard issue it would of killed all of it right? If it was a CPU issue it just wouldn't work at all.

I dug deeper and my ram is a different version, I thought, maybe that caused it, but since it didn't kill the sticks in a logical order I lost 1 stick of V3.44 and 1 stick of V4.33. PC is up and running right with 1 in A2 and 1 in B2 now but I don't feel like it's necessarily safe. Who's to say it won't kill slot A2 again? It killed a stick from EACH KIT! Do I really have to RMA all of my ram and just be out a PC for awhile? I assume I have to send the entirety of both the kits back.

The heart of my question is, is my motherboard safe? Did I pick a budget board for a high power system and play myself? Is it a possible or common occurrence for new ram to just kick the bucket like that? I personally have never had ram die without the whole system dying so it seems wild to me.

 

[Ralston18]

This motherboard?

https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/M7D25v1.0.pdf

[Do verify that I found the applicable motherboard manual.]

Were you sure to physically install the first RAM stick (memory module) in slot DIMMA2?

Reference physically numbered Pages 14 and 15 in the linked manual.

Especially the Important note at the top of Page 15.

 

[JoopJohnson]

When I first started my machine after initial build It was in A2 and B2. Next kit arrived two days later and I put them in A1 and B1 for a full 4 stick config and it ran fine.

I did all my post tests with B2. I suppose that could be an issue but the "ram not inserted into optimal slots" warning did not appear during my individual stick/slot tests.

Adding that I attempted to clear any weird settings with a CMOS removal/ unplug/ 15minutes. I'm not sure if that was successful since my hardware colors didn't change to default. After that I Flashed my BIOS, and did a clean windows install. Results stayed the same. I'm not sure if I need to try a much longer wait time on the reset or also unplug everything internally.

Ran a windows memory diagnostics with the 2 working sticks (just to kill time and be thorough essentially) it came back with no errors.

 

[JoopJohnson]

This motherboard?

https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/M7D25v1.0.pdf

[Do verify that I found the applicable motherboard manual.]

Were you sure to physically install the first RAM stick (memory module) in slot DIMMA2?

Reference physically numbered Pages 14 and 15 in the linked manual.

Especially the Important note at the top of Page 15.

Yes that is the correct motherboard see above comment for more details.

 

[JoopJohnson]

I tried booting with each dead stick in A2, no post with either stick.

Should I just set up the RMA and get it over with? This was expensive ram, and without being incredibly well-versed in how exactly it functions, it really seems to me like it's some sort of software or BIOS failure. Since it worked fine and then just booted up dead. To my knowledge DDR4 does not have any sort of controlling chip on it physically. It's controlled by CPU and mobo chips right? I also know how it dies, too much voltage, heat, damage, etc. I don't see how it could of died from one of those factors, it really seems like the failure is in the sticks themselves, it's just so unbelievably random.

Is it all just some grand coincidence? I have NEVER had ram die or "not be detectable" before.