Computer building question

[RocketMan]

This is true, and sometimes memory does not like running under its rated timings.  Lots of variability in that.

Edited for clarity, that sometimes memory does not like running below its rated timings.

[lee n. field]

I'm going to caveat what I just said earlier about Mobo manufacturer drivers.

The CD they ship with their boards?  Throw it away.  Use it for skeet practice.  Do anything except run its software.

Try to get by with whatever driver Windows provides.  If that doesn't work, THEN go to the mobo manufacturer site and download their "chipset" driver package.  NOTHING ELSE.  Read it carefully during installation, and avoid anything that's an auto-updater or a startup program or a system tray utility.  You can get the mobo chipset driver from MSI without installing their bullshit suite.  I've had to do that while my mobo's chipset was in its early days back in 2019.

For Dells (which we sell), I'll go to the support site, manually get the latest BIOS, and the Dell Update utility.  Install BIOS manually, and let the updater pull the latest.  These are Optiplexes,  not whatever they might do on the home user side.

[Calumus]

Simple things first. Shut down and unplug. Hit the power button a couple times to discharge the system completely. Then check the entire build. Are the ram sticks in the right way, in the right slots (2 and 4 if you’re only running two sticks)  Is the ram all the way in? The catch lever at one end of the slot should be locking it in to place with a cut out on the stick.

Check all of your power cables. There’s one at the top left of the board, plus the main 24 pin. Make sure they’re plugged in all the way, and plugged in to the right spot on the power supply.

If everything checks out, save the trouble shooting headache and just install Windows from scratch. It only takes about 10 mins on an nvme drive. This time, don’t install anything from the manufacturer.

[dogmush]

Thought I'd circle back and give an update:

All the Memory Sticks seemed like they were fully seated, and adjusting the memory speed off of "auto" to what the RAM was rated at did not seem to show a difference.

I followed Calumus' suggestion and shut it down, cleared power and reinstalled Windows, making sure to not allow any weird bloatware.  THE MSI bloat/driver installer popped back up on the first startup and I just closed that mofo.

The computer's been running for 4 days straight now with no crashes or BSoDs.  I get a warning that it can't install my scr3xx.sys driver when I plug in my SCR3310 smart card reader, which is strange, as those usually play well with windows.  It also fails to see the internal second drive, which it used to when it was crashing.  Event Viewer shows error logs every time it tries to access drive 2.  Event Viewer also shows Windows Update Client failing occasionally, but not all the time it tries to install updates.

At least I have a usable computer for now.  Sunday I'll put in the wireless card and USB header I forgot on the original build and see if we can get the second internal drive back.

THanks again for the ongoing help.

[dogmush]

And literally after I hit enter, it crashed and won't boot.

F this I'm drinking mead tonight.

[cordex]

I’m voting again for RAM, CPU, disk, and GPU hardware checks from a bootable environment.

This smells like a bad piece of hardware.

[RocketMan]

I’m voting again for RAM, CPU, disk, and GPU hardware checks from a bootable environment.

This smells like a bad piece of hardware.

Agreed.  Need to run hardware checks.

[AZRedhawk44]

Dogmush, this is the RAM I sold you, isn't it?

I was getting similar symptoms from it after I went from 16 to 32 GB (adding the 2nd pair).  However, I wrote it off as a very finicky AMD 3xxx series CPU and MSI X570 chipset.

Try running your system with only 16GB of that RAM.  See if the BSODs go away.

Let me know the results.

[dogmush]

Ok. Will give that a shot.

[dogmush]

Well it booted back up.

I'm still going to download Ultimate Boot CD and do the checks Cordex suggested.

[lee n. field]

Well it booted back up.

I'm still going to download Ultimate Boot CD and do the checks Cordex suggested.

UBCD is pretty old.  "The project is pretty much in hibernation now,"

[Calumus]

Start with one stick of ram for now. Download the newest version of Linux mint to a USB 3 drive, and run it off of that for a bit. If that crashes, try the other stick. While booted into mint, see if it can find your other drive. If it crashes with either stick, try one stick in a different slot.

[RocketMan]

You could just download the free version of MemTest86 from memtest86.com or the open source MemTest86+ from memtest.org.  Both tools are standalone that can be booted from a USB stick or CD.  They do a good job testing memory and will pin down the exact memory location(s) that is (are) failing.  I've been using them for years, starting back when you put them on a bootable floppy disk.

[dogmush]

Start with one stick of ram for now. Download the newest version of Linux mint to a USB 3 drive, and run it off of that for a bit. If that crashes, try the other stick. While booted into mint, see if it can find your other drive. If it crashes with either stick, try one stick in a different slot.

I found the other drive.  That was a brain fart on my part.

Am doing the "run with less memory" test right now, albeit in Windows.  If/when she crashes again I'll look into getting a different OS on a USB stick.

[AZRedhawk44]

I found the other drive.  That was a brain fart on my part.

Am doing the "run with less memory" test right now, albeit in Windows.  If/when she crashes again I'll look into getting a different OS on a USB stick.

If the memory turns out to be bad, send it back to me and I'll get you your money back.  I don't want to saddle you with bad memory.

I really thought it was just a incompatibility with my particular setup.

[Calumus]

In Fistful’s absence, it may now turn out that everything is actually AZ’s fault...😂

[RocketMan]

In Fistful’s absence, it may now turn out that everything is actually AZ’s fault...😂

APS does need a resident scapegoat.  And it seems that fistful has given up that position.  I second the nomination.

[Calumus]

While we’re waiting to hear back from dogmush on his continuing adventures in PC building, i thought I’d share the results of my last week and a bit.

To my wife’s joy, this has been in our dining room for the last week and a bit...



I forgot to take a pic of the closed up case; but it’s a Lian Li 216, which is my current go to for normal builds.



Next is in the same case that dogmush used.




And outside



Very nice looking case. Well made but i won’t use one again unless specifically requested. Layout wasn’t the best, and because i had to mount the 280 radiator in the front, i had to remove the front dust filter. Every time the fans would spool up, they would pull the mesh filter in just enough to make contact. The noise was pretty annoying.



This is in a Lian Li O11 Dynamic mini Air. I will be using this again. Nice little case to work in for simple builds.



And lastly, my new rig. Just a quick snapshot as leak and fan curve testing aren’t done yet, so it’s still sitting open

[dogmush]

It's up and stable running on just one set of RAM.  Ultimate Boot CD detects no hardware issues.  It's been running for 12 days.  After work I'm going to shut it down and swap it to the other set of RAM and see if one pair is bad, or if it just has some kind of "I don't like running all four chips at once" issue.  I did look at the serial numbers on the chips and am running them in the pairs they were originally shipped in.  On thought I had, is that I didn't pay real attention on the initial install, and this motherboard says if you are running only one set of RAM to use slots 2 and 4 first, it's possible that I mixed up the "pairs" of RAM and the "Pairs" of RAM slots on the MB.  No idea if that could cause these issues.

Now that I have some time on it running stable I really like it.  For a pretty modest build it does exactly what I want it to do is way smaller, quieter, and faster than the huge gaming desktop it's replacing and looks nice in the office.  So mission (mostly) accomplished.

[lee n. field]

It's up and stable running on just one set of RAM.  Ultimate Boot CD detects no hardware issues.  It's been running for 12 days.  After work I'm going to shut it down and swap it to the other set of RAM and see if one pair is bad, or if it just has some kind of "I don't like running all four chips at once" issue.  I did look at the serial numbers on the chips and am running them in the pairs they were originally shipped in.  On thought I had, is that I didn't pay real attention on the initial install, and this motherboard says if you are running only one set of RAM to use slots 2 and 4 first, it's possible that I mixed up the "pairs" of RAM and the "Pairs" of RAM slots on the MB.  No idea if that could cause these issues.

Now that I have some time on it running stable I really like it.  For a pretty modest build it does exactly what I want it to do is way smaller, quieter, and faster than the huge gaming desktop it's replacing and looks nice in the office.  So mission (mostly) accomplished.

Could be a single socket that's bad.  You've got one stick of RAM that test good.  March through the other sockets and test.

[dogmush]

Could be a single socket that's bad.  You've got one stick of RAM that test good.  March through the other sockets and test.

Two sticks so far.  THat's kind of the plan, but I want to test the other sticks of RAM first.  MSI warns against filling the RAM slots out of order, so I can't just move the stick around.  THey ar clear that you fill the slots up in this order : 2,4,1,3.  If you do it out of order the BIOS will pop a warning when you boot.

[WLJ]

Is this the same ram where I found a discussing saying there was bug in it that caused errors if running in 2 banks?

[AZRedhawk44]

Is this the same ram where I found a discussing saying there was bug in it that caused errors if running in 2 banks?

I believe so.  But that was also tied to the memory controller on early Ryzen CPUs.

[WLJ]

I believe so.  But that was also tied to the memory controller on early Ryzen CPUs.

Okay, didn't remember the details of the cause.

[dogmush]

OK, last update.

I've spent the last two weeks running hardware checks, and troubleshooting, and moving RAM sticks around.  I've not only figured out what did it, but managed to reproduce the issues as well as fix them:

The RAM is in matched sets.  Each pair of 8Gb sticks has sequential serial numbers, but the two pairs are quite a bit different.  The MSI MB has four DIMM slots.  Slots 1 and 3 are Memory Channel "B" and slots 2 and 4 are Memory Channel "A".

If you mix the pairs of RAM on the Channels (i.e. one stick from each pair on the same Channel) all hell breaks loose.  As long as you keep the pairs of RAM together, and use channel A before B if only running one pair, everything is stable.

On intial assembly I just opened the RAM sticks and installed them left to right across the DIMM slots, which caused the problems because the channels alternate.  The instructions did mention using slots 2 and 4 if you were only running two sticks, but I had no idea the RAM sticks that came together were "paired" together that hard. 

I'm still pretty glad I went this route, as It's a pretty solid computer now, and having a Windows install without all the OEM bloatware on it is really nice.  With 32gb of RAM (working) and the M.2 SSD the computer is blazing fast for anything I will use it for, and reasonably future proof.

Thanks to everyone that helped me out with the parts picking and troubleshooting.