Ram/cpu
Ram/cpu
Interesting points to remember: my desktop doubled as a media and remote gaming hub, so it never got shut down or put to sleep. Around a year ago, after a long gaming session, I noticed the RGB stopped working—some sticks would turn black, others displayed incorrect colors or freeze. The system became unstable when RAM usage approached 50%, even though the CPU was only at 10%. I ran Windows Memory Diagnostics, which cleared up the issue. Once back in Windows, everything looked normal except that my RGB never turned back on and wasn’t visible on any controller. A few weeks later, I got a new GPU, swapped it in, and when I powered it back on, all the RAM lit up and functioned properly for a short time. Then I rebooted for diagnostics; no errors appeared, though the RGB remained unresponsive.
A few weeks ago, while recovering from an injury, I decided to do a full Windows reinstall—about a week long. I could only sit at my desk briefly each day before my foot swelled up like a balloon. The same issue returned, but when setting up virtual machines, I realized half my physical RAM was missing. After rebooting into BIOS, it seemed XMP was disabled and only 16GB of my 4x8GB system was active. I turned off the system, reinserted the RAM, and ran both Windows Memory Diagnostics and MemTest86—no errors detected.
But a day later, the same symptoms returned. I double-checked my RAM values: it still showed 32GB, but errors appeared once back in Windows. The system went to sleep unexpectedly because I hadn’t adjusted settings yet. When I came back, my RAM displayed 16GB again after rebooting into BIOS, and no errors occurred. After fully powering off and turning it back on, it returned to 32GB with no issues.
After testing, I found that even though the system reported some memory codes, it didn’t reset the RAM. Putting it to sleep seemed to trigger a stick or two to drop, whereas shutting it down reset the RAM and worked for a few days or hours depending on how much stress the system endured. Initially, I thought the problem was slow RAM sticks, planning to replace them. But over the past year, multiple family members—my wife, mom, mother-in-law, and myself—had medical issues. That made it hard to justify spending around $100 for a new 32GB stick.
Now I’m starting to suspect either a CPU issue or a memory power problem. My biggest concern is that I live in a rural area with no access to spare X299 boards or compatible processors for testing. The current kit I have is too large for my kids’ rigs, so I’m looking for ways to narrow down the problem without wasting money.
Current setup:
- Asus Rampage VI Encore
- Gskill Trident Z 3600
- 8GB RAM x 4GB DDR4
- 3TB NVMe drives
- 4TB SATA drives
- MSI 3080 GPU
- Custom LC loop
- Corsair HXI 1000W power supply