Is it motherboard or ram????????

[cub1061]

A work mate told me that he was having issues with his PC not booting up.
He said it was working fine then just stopped working with red led lights coming on.
His board is an Asus P8z68-V-Pro.
I ask he to strip his system and i'll have a look at the board for him.

I use an old Pentium G640 and 4gb Gskill ram.
I try the stick in all 4 slots, slot 1,2 and 4 the memtest led will light up.
After press the test button it will flash but no post.
Slot 3 however is different.
The memtest led does not light up but the pci led does with power going to the keyboard.
Still no post to monitor.

The memory is from my pc so I know these works.

Could this be faulty memory slots or bad pci socket?

[Ravens Nest]

Have you tried taking the cpu out and putting it back in or clearing the CMOS (unplug the power cord and remove the CMOS battery for few minutes) or via jumper? and have you tried a different PSU on it.

Also is it onboard graphics or a graphics card? if its a Graphics card try plugging the hdmi into the onboard graphics port on the motherboard and see if it boots from there, or maybe try a graphics card in it and see if it boots.

[cub1061]

Have you tried taking the cpu out and putting it back in or Reseting the BIOS via jumper? and have you tried a different PSU on it.

Tried resetting bios using the jumper and also taking out the battery.
The PSU is a corsair 550w from my pc so I am sure that this is also working.
Took cpu and check to see if there were any bent pins, everything seems ok.

[Ravens Nest]

I have added some other comments to my original post if it helps you.

Is the 8pin CPU power lead pushed all the way in, also im not sure but does it cause problems if you dont have the leads plugged into the reset,power led, hdd led socket?

Tried cleaning the PCI express and RAM sockets and RAM with surgical spirit?

Leaving the CMOS battery out all night and trying in the morning? (Just reading on a forum that 24 hours is the minimum to clear it)

[cub1061]

Situation so far.
Manage to boot into bios and windows.

Put 4gb stick into slot 3 as this didn't light up the memtest led.
stuck in a cheap GPU, pressed memtest, it cycled and booted to bios.
tried this with all other slots and it also booted in slot 4.

Tried using 2 sticks and manage to get it to boot only when installed in slot 3 and 4.
So maybe slot 1 and 2 is dead. (no dual channel)

Problem is now, bios will read 4gb from slot 3 or 4 but not both together, so when I leave both sticks in 3 and 4 bios only read 4gb not 8gb.
profile setting in bios shows both 3 and 4 is populated with memory.

CPUZ in windows show 8gb but system only shows 4gb.

What am I missing?
I suspect slot 1 and 2 are dead, 3 and 4 will boot but bios won't pick up both sticks together.

[cub1061]

Got my mate to bring over his memory, he has 2x16gb sticks.
tried these in slot 3 and 4 and same, bios and system only reads 8gb.
Put 8gb in slot 3 and 4gb in slot 4, bios reads 8gb from slot 3, I swap them over and bios reads 8gb from slot 4.

Why?????????

[DanceswithUnix]

Is that Pentium 640 his CPU or one you are using to test?

RAM is driven by the CPU, so dodgy ram could be motherboard, CPU or power supply.

[cub1061]

Is that Pentium 640 his CPU or one you are using to test?

RAM is driven by the CPU, so dodgy ram could be motherboard, CPU or power supply.

The G640 is my spare cpu. I also have an i3 so tested with this as well.
I have a skt1155 mobo with the i3 as my spare pc and the memory and psu came out of that,

[DanceswithUnix]

Then I suspect the power regulation on the motherboard for the ram has failed. That might explain why it can just drive one stick, perhaps in a slot that is slightly better properties than the others.

At this point I would give up. Perhaps time to look at a new CPU+motherboard, you should be able to get something that can use the old DDR3 ram given DDR4 is damned expensive atm. Motherboards for old Intel CPUs are horribly expensive, I think I have an i3 from that era in the garage in case I stumble across an old motherboard but never have.

How much CPU grunt does your friend need?

[cub1061]

Then I suspect the power regulation on the motherboard for the ram has failed. That might explain why it can just drive one stick, perhaps in a slot that is slightly better properties than the others.

At this point I would give up. Perhaps time to look at a new CPU+motherboard, you should be able to get something that can use the old DDR3 ram given DDR4 is damned expensive atm. Motherboards for old Intel CPUs are horribly expensive, I think I have an i3 from that era in the garage in case I stumble across an old motherboard but never have.

How much CPU grunt does your friend need?

He was running an i5 2400, i'll give him my spare board as he doesn't want to upgrade or sell anything atm.

Why would the bios only picking up the largest memory modular regarding of which slot it sat in?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It could also be a sign their PSU is starting to go south so I would replace that too.

[DanceswithUnix]

Why would the bios only picking up the largest memory modular regarding of which slot it sat in?

Setting up modern DRAM can be really difficult, only the person who did that bit of BIOS would be able to tell you that, and that would probably be after a few days of work.

[cub1061]

Playing around with this all day, even strip my main system and used the PSU. Same issues.

Should I try and re-flash the Bios?

[cub1061]

Just read this, seem like this may be a firmware/bios issues
https://hardforum.com/threads/tools-...r-ftk.1726429/
will try this tomorrow. Had enough today

[Ravens Nest]

Playing around with this all day, even strip my main system and used the PSU. Same issues.

Should I try and re-flash the Bios?

Just read this, seem like this may be a firmware/bios issues
https://hardforum.com/threads/tools-...r-ftk.1726429/
will try this tomorrow. Had enough today

Get permission from him then i would do it, just let him know the risks first.

Maybe a corrupt BIOS, so a flash to the latest BIOS may help but also could turn it into a doorstop.

[cub1061]

Update: Re flash bios no success.

Will read up and try FTK method.

Has anyone tried this before?