I got a really weird problem.

Two years ago bought a set of 4x DDR4 3200 16gb each, single sided and placed them in a ryzen 5600 desktop computer, which i almost never turned it off. It worked without issue.

This weekend I wanted to dust off the PC, so I took all the components out, replaced the thermal paste and so on.

Turned on the PC again, worked apparently without issues until after a while Linux was pissed about going out of memory. Out of memory? With 64gb of RAM? I checked with dmidecode -t memory and I saw that a channel was reporting completely empty.

Shut down the PC, reinserted the second channel, rebooted, saw 64gb. One hour later, kernel panic. Rebooted in memtest86+, error in memory. What? Removed one module, error. Removed two modules, no error. Switched the modules, no error. What??

Placed the two modules that are passing the test in another computer, error. Put back in the original computer, pass test. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Now I downclocked from 3200 to 2400 and everything seems working fine.

What could be? Have I been cursed?

After a few reinsertions do the slots degrade to a point that can’t sustain 3200 anymore?

  • @[email protected]English
    2•2 months ago

    Placed the two modules that are passing the test in another computer, error

    So you put the ram you thought was good in another motherboard and it failed memtest? I’d interpret that to mean one of 3 things

    A) the problem is in one of those modules you switched

    B) separate problems occurred on both motherboards either due to unrelated issues or the memory being seated incorrectly (this is really unlucky)

    C) there’s a problem with the modules you switched and an unrelated problem either in the other modules or in your primary motherboard (you poor bastard)

    Did you take note of where in memory memtest was finding errors? If it wasn’t in the same general area between runs then its more likely to be a motherboard issue.

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•2 months ago

      On the x370 Ryzen motherboard the test always failed at test #5 and it appeared to be shifted bytes (expected FEFEFEFE got 00FEFEFEFE)

      On a H series lowest end Intel motherboard it just beeps and won’t even boot in dual channel. Single channel instead boots and pass the test. The Intel motherboard has those shitty RAM slots where there’s only one clip on a single side and the other is fixed (to save 1¢ I guess) so it’s a bit difficult to assure proper contact