Rubin Shrestha
Zend certified PHP/Magento developer
Rubin Shrestha
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Four RAM sticks work independantly, but not all together. Is the motherboard definitely the issue?

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I have an issue with blue screen quite often saying memory issues.

The issue
The problem first started I upgraded my SSD from a SATA3 M.2 to a PICe gen 4 M.2 NVMe. When I swapped the SSDs, I also decided to update the BIOS on my motherboard. I have an ASUS TUF Gaming B450m. I don’t know what version of the BIOS it had before was. I have 4 sticks of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200MHz. I bought them as 2 different 2x8GB kits, but they’ve been working together fine for about 3 years previously. They’re all CMK16GX4M2B3200C16.

My first issue after the SSD upgrade, BIOS update, and following windows 10 install, was that when I restarted the PC, it would hang on a black screen somewhere. I turned off DOCP and this fixed this issue. I also tried turning the BIOS back to the second most recent version, and was unable to get DOCP on. So I’ve been running without DOCP with all 4 sticks for a while.

I’ve been away for a week and just come back to find my computer BSODs pretty often. I tried running the Windows Memory Diagnostic and it says I’ve got a memory problem. So I’ve run a series of these tests in different configurations. DOCP is still off.

I have four RAM slots, A1 A2 B1 B2. A2 is the preferred for one RAM stick, A2 and B2 are for two. Of the four RAM sticks, I’ll label them as M1, M2, M3 and M4. M1 and M2 are from one kit (the serial number is incremented by 1 from one stick to the other), and M3 and M4 are from the other kit (again, serial numbers differ by 1).

What I’ve tried
These are the tests I’ve run:

  1. M1 in A2 – test ran fine
  2. M2 in A2 – test ran fine
  3. M3 in A2 – test ran fine
  4. M4 in A2 – test ran fine
  5. M1 in A2, and M2 in B2 – test ran fine
  6. M1 in A1, and M2 in B1 – test ran fine
  7. M1 in A1, M2 in B1, M3 in A2, and M4 in B2 – test returns error with memory
    The computer struggles to load into windows afterwards, giving multiple bluescreens and the like. I take two sticks out, it boots. I re-run test 6 again, and it works ok.
  8. M3 in A2, and M4 in B2 – test ran fine
  9. M3 in A1, and M4 in B1 – test ran fine
  10. M3 in A1, M4 in B1, M1 in A2, and M2 in B2 – test returns error with memory.

So whilst I’ve not tried every permutation of RAM sticks in RAM slots, I’ve tried enough to make me think that the RAM sticks are ok. Presumably it’s something wrong with the motherboard?

What I’m asking
I’m looking for thoughts on ways I can diagnose the problem exactly, before replacing the motherboard (or more likely, upgrading).

PSU is 850W, GPU is Sapphire Pulse 5600XT, CPU is AMD 3600.

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