- Aug 26, 2016
- 12
- 1
- 4,515
There's been a lot of stuff happening to my PC so I apologize if this gets too long and messy.
Before I start describing what’s going on, I built it 6 months ago (it was my first build) and I never had an issue until now, these are the specs: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/RX3HMv
My problems started a week ago: I was playing a game when the screen suddenly turned black and I heard a buzzing sound from my headphones. I panicked so I pressed the power button and after this the PC was stuck in a BSOD loop giving me errors such as SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED or RESOURCE NOT OWNED.
Then I tried to boot it in safe mode but I had no video signal. I also tried to use the command prompt from the recovery options and the monitor suddenly turned black here as well. This always happened when I was pressing enter to execute certain instructions (one was bootrec related and the other one was "dir" as I was checking some folders).
Thinking that there was some issue with Windows I tried to repair/reinstall it using an USB but the monitor turned black yet again, usually after choosing the installation drive so when it was supposed to start the installation process.
At this point, I realized that maybe the issue was hardware related so I've focused on the pieces on the mobo to find the culprit.
The first thing I did was removing the SSD and trying to boot Ubuntu from an USB but yet another black screen greeted me as soon as the files verification process was done. The same thing happened if I removed the HDD.
Then I used memtest86.
The first time, after 2 hours, it froze after 2 passes and it only gave me a warning regarding vulnerability to "high frequency row hammer bit flips".
The second time it gave me 32 errors during the hammer test and it froze.
The third time I removed one of the RAMs and it gave me 16 errors during the same test and it froze yet again.
This is what the screen looked like after the three tests: View: https://imgur.com/a/Z7iJ0AC
Then I did 5-6 tests on the single RAMs by moving them around the slots and I got a pass every time (4 successful passes).
I also did a couple of tests with memtest86+ to see if anything changed and these passed as well.
After this I tried yet again to boot Ubuntu from that USB by using a single RAM each time but I had no success.
Now I'm stuck at this point as I'm not 100% certain it is the RAMs' fault, I don't know if it's normal for these to break both at once. But I think it would be even weirder for all the 4 slots to suddenly have issues.
I forgot to mention that every time I had no video signal the yellow (DRAM according to the manual) led stayed lit up.
I'm currently not able to do tests with other RAM sticks so I hope the information I gave is enough for a diagnosis.
I also got these two weird video glitches, each of them occurred only once, hopefully not because of the GPU: View: https://imgur.com/a/jZl7VFo
Speaking of the GPU, I couldn't test this one either. Theoretically the one from the PC I'm using right now should be compatible with the new mobo but because of a physical limitation I had to give up.
So in conclusion, since it’s not clear to me what the memtest86 results mean, I’d want to know if what I did so far would be enough for me to ask Amazon for a replacement of if there was anything else I could have overlooked (besides actually trying other parts).
Thank you.
Before I start describing what’s going on, I built it 6 months ago (it was my first build) and I never had an issue until now, these are the specs: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/RX3HMv
My problems started a week ago: I was playing a game when the screen suddenly turned black and I heard a buzzing sound from my headphones. I panicked so I pressed the power button and after this the PC was stuck in a BSOD loop giving me errors such as SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED or RESOURCE NOT OWNED.
Then I tried to boot it in safe mode but I had no video signal. I also tried to use the command prompt from the recovery options and the monitor suddenly turned black here as well. This always happened when I was pressing enter to execute certain instructions (one was bootrec related and the other one was "dir" as I was checking some folders).
Thinking that there was some issue with Windows I tried to repair/reinstall it using an USB but the monitor turned black yet again, usually after choosing the installation drive so when it was supposed to start the installation process.
At this point, I realized that maybe the issue was hardware related so I've focused on the pieces on the mobo to find the culprit.
The first thing I did was removing the SSD and trying to boot Ubuntu from an USB but yet another black screen greeted me as soon as the files verification process was done. The same thing happened if I removed the HDD.
Then I used memtest86.
The first time, after 2 hours, it froze after 2 passes and it only gave me a warning regarding vulnerability to "high frequency row hammer bit flips".
The second time it gave me 32 errors during the hammer test and it froze.
The third time I removed one of the RAMs and it gave me 16 errors during the same test and it froze yet again.
This is what the screen looked like after the three tests: View: https://imgur.com/a/Z7iJ0AC
Then I did 5-6 tests on the single RAMs by moving them around the slots and I got a pass every time (4 successful passes).
I also did a couple of tests with memtest86+ to see if anything changed and these passed as well.
After this I tried yet again to boot Ubuntu from that USB by using a single RAM each time but I had no success.
Now I'm stuck at this point as I'm not 100% certain it is the RAMs' fault, I don't know if it's normal for these to break both at once. But I think it would be even weirder for all the 4 slots to suddenly have issues.
I forgot to mention that every time I had no video signal the yellow (DRAM according to the manual) led stayed lit up.
I'm currently not able to do tests with other RAM sticks so I hope the information I gave is enough for a diagnosis.
I also got these two weird video glitches, each of them occurred only once, hopefully not because of the GPU: View: https://imgur.com/a/jZl7VFo
Speaking of the GPU, I couldn't test this one either. Theoretically the one from the PC I'm using right now should be compatible with the new mobo but because of a physical limitation I had to give up.
So in conclusion, since it’s not clear to me what the memtest86 results mean, I’d want to know if what I did so far would be enough for me to ask Amazon for a replacement of if there was anything else I could have overlooked (besides actually trying other parts).
Thank you.
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