Very strange problem; what do you think- memory, or motherboard?

Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited August 2004 in Hardware
My friend's computer has been spontaneously rebooting as of late. My first response was "memtest", to which he said "What the hell are you talking about?" So, I brought over my EBCD, and ran memtest. The result was >160,000 errors in 512MB of RAM.

So, we started testing the sticks individually, and both returned errors. Now, I had a very difficult time believing that BOTH sticks were/are bad, so I took them home with me, and I'm currently testing them in my NF7-S. So far, I've run 1 iteration of the standard test on one of the sticks. The result? 0 errors.

What the hell?

<ul>His system specs:
<li>ABIT KG7
<li>AMD 761 chipset
<li>2x 256MB Samsung PC2100 DDR (Samsung chip, Samsung PCB)
<li>Athlon XP 1900+ (Palomino)
<li>ATi Radeon 8500
<li>SB Live Value 5.1
<li>Intel 56k V.90 modem
<li>Linksys 10/100 NIC
<li>Maxtor 60GB D740x HDD
<li>Western Digital ~10gb HDD
<li>Mitsumi CD burner
<li>Sony DVD
<li>Floppy
<li>Antec SX635 case
<li>1 30cfm/80mm exhaust fan
<li>350w dual-fan Antec (HEC) AMD-approved PS
<li>AMD retail HSF
</ul>

Also note that this system has NEVER been overclocked in any way, shape or form; even the CAS latency has always been at the default 2.5, even though this ram is absolutely capable of 2.0 without a problem.

The fact that this RAM returned errors on his board, but runs just fine on my NF7-S, is causing me to :wtf:

I'm thinking that his board is dying, even more so since it refuses to finish POSTing if you don't have RAM in DIMM 4 (it pops up a message saying that the RAM slots have to be populated starting with DIMM 4, with DIMM 1 being the last one to get RAM)

I've cleaned the contacts on the RAM with an eraser, even though they didn't need it. That did nothing.

I cleaned the RAM slots, even though they didn't need it, and that too, did nothing.

I checked the voltages with a multimeter; while running memtest, they were +12.34v, +5.1v, and +3.35v, respectively, so it's not the PS.

The temps check out fine in the BIOS, so it's not heat-related, either.

So what do you think? I'm thinking it's the board... Did I miss something that could point to another culprit, though?

Comments

  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    Update:
    I took the RAM out of the NF7-S before I went to bed, and put it in my print server (1.3GHz Celeron, Via Apollo Pro 266 chipset). I started memtest and told it to run a full test.

    It has now been running for over 5:30, and has produced exactly 0 errors.

    So, I think it's probably his KG7...
  • EyesOnlyEyesOnly Sweden New
    edited December 2003
    Must be. It can't really be anything else if it works on your board.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited December 2003
    Sounds like a motherboard to me. Guess you can test every part to make sure.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I figured it MIGHT be a CPU thing, but the AXP (obviously) doesn't have an integrated memory controller, so it shouldn't have anything to do with it...

    Oh well...
    The good news- His parents will have to buy a new board (nForce2 here we come...) :p

    The bad news- the ram is good (which means his parents won't have to upgrade to 1GB... :shakehead )
    :D
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited December 2003
    Well one of 2 anyway. One step at a time.
  • qparadoxqparadox Vancouver, BC
    edited December 2003
    Its probably the motherboard, but before they splurge you might want to check out the PSU. If the ram is getting high/low voltages it could cause problems. 90% its the motherboard ... but it would suck to get a new board and find out it was the PSU all along.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    I checked the voltages with a multimeter; while running memtest, they were +12.34v, +5.1v, and +3.35v, respectively, so it's not the PS.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Just tell them the board is fried and the current CPU and RAM will be obsolete on a new board. :D
  • xTc---JackalxTc---Jackal Akron, Ohio
    edited August 2004
    I had a very similar problem and it turned out to be a bad EIDE controller.....I know this is a late post, but I just joined....check it out anyway if you are still having probs...
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