Your PC won't start up because of the new RAM stick you got.
Your PC won't start up because of the new RAM stick you got.
Hi, History: I bought an Asus Z mother board about five years ago and paired it with four 4GB DDR4 HyperX memory sticks running at 2666MHz. The problem is that these rams are set to 800MHz when they come out of the box, but I can push them up to 2666MHz in the BIOS and they work fine. However, sometimes nothing happens without any reason (actually there might be one). If I move or knock the whole pc unit, it won't boot up. This started happening right after I bought my first pc five years ago. My way of fixing this: I've used the exact same trick to fix this problem all these years because I'm not a computer nerd but I know some stuff about computers since I am an engineer. Step 1: Take out three ram sticks and keep only one left. Step 2: Turn on the pc and it works, it boots up with just one ram installed. Step 3: Go into BIOS and reset all the overclock settings to default, then restart. Step 4: Start putting the rams back in one by one until they all start booting together. Step 5: Go into BIOS again and try setting the overclock back on. Step 6: Turn on the pc and it works perfectly now. Step 7: If I knock the pc up and it won't boot anymore, I'll go to step one and repeat the whole thing. Conclusion: My guess is that when I knock the pc one of the rams gets moved or not connected properly into its slot and defaults back down to 800MHz while the other three stay at 2666MHz. The pc then has two different settings for the ram and refuses to boot up. If I take out three and leave just one, there is only one value in that ram stick which is 2666MHz; then by using Step 3 from above it goes back to the same values of the uninstalled rams, and when I put them all back they have the same value of 800MHz so the pc boots up. Questions: Do you think this is really the case? What do you think is causing the issue, one ram slot on the motherboard or is it the actual ram itself? But my guess is that it can't be the ram because if it was a bad ram then it wouldn't boot at all. Do you know how to fix this permanently? Thanks
It could be an extra pin sticking out wrong inside the socket, a CPU cooler not fastened tight enough pushing against the memory controller, or maybe just a bad BIOS setting where bumping the RAM voltage 0.05 volts fixes it all. Or maybe the VCCIO wire is loose. Or the VCCSA wire is broken. If you turn on your computer and your RAM acts up, hitting the side of the case won't help much because that part isn't really moving anyway. With a big chunk of aluminum sitting there but held together by just a few screws far away from where the wires should go, shaking or vibrating it more than normal is much more likely to cause problems.
DDR4 usually starts at 2133MHz. If it locks down, it means everything is set right and won't go loose. I've never seen DDR4 run at 800MHz either; even back in the DDR2 days, nobody got that low. DDR4 doesn't have low-speed tables for this speed anyway. Maybe what you read about 800MHz is actually a data rate, not a clock speed. Putting it at 1600MHz is still very slow, so I think maybe you are looking at something else entirely. The only thing I can guess is that your CPU isn't sitting straight or the socket has a bent pin, which is messing with how the memory controller works.
Motherboard is Asus Z170-K. It happened today again, and I have four RAM slots with two pairs of them. That's why there are two black slots and two grey slots. So, I did the same thing as before until all 4 booted up, then I overclocked to 2666mhz for all 4, but now it won't boot at all. After that, I removed just one from the middle grey slot and left with only three 4gb Rams installed overclocked at 2666mhz, and it booted up okay. Now I'm wondering if there is a connection issue between the two grey slots on the motherboard? Or does the middle grey one have some bad pins or whatever they are called?
It could be something wrong inside the socket, like a pin not sitting right or your cpu cooler being loose and pressing too hard on one side. Or maybe your BIOS isn't stable, and bumping the memory voltage by just 0.05 volts might fix it all. Or it could be VCCIO or VCCSA. If you shake up the computer and the RAM starts acting weird, hitting the side of the PC won't make it move at all. You'd still get nothing from the ram. But having that big piece of aluminum hanging loosely on a few screws, far away from the middle of the motherboard, makes much more sense because shaking or vibrating it would likely cause problems anyway.