BSOD using CMP6GX3M3A1600C8

[GordonInDE]

Hi,

 

I’m reaching out for a bit of help here, as my PC is doing its level best to age me prematurely with its behavior. I have a new build that I put together about a month ago, which has been giving me endless issues related to BSOD. The system I have is the one in my system spec details, and I see from the forum rules that we’re not supposed to repeat this information if it’s already in our posted “system spec”. As such, all I would repeat is the product ID of the memory - Corsair 6GB kit - CMP6GX3M3A1600C8. The rest of the system is as is described in my system spec.

 

Sometimes it will work fine for hours, but most times it lasts about a half hour before the system blue screens. Thereafter, if I’m lucky, it will actually stay stable for an hour or two, but the duration of up-time is completely random. The few times that it does leave me a clue in the event log, (apart from stating the blindingly obvious that the kernel unexpectedly lost power), it points to memory issues. I have received the BAD_POOL_HEADER, the MEMORY_MANAGER and the STOP 0x1a error, as well as a STOP 0x19 error. Above are just the ones I can remember off-hand.

 

I have researched this issue substantially, and I keep making changes, none of which keep this system from crashing over the medium term. Finally I ran Memtest and was overloaded with errors, after which I did the following –

 

a. Changed to XMP Profile 1, and ran Memtest again. Wow, a clean pass – and yet the system still rewarded my efforts by crashing shortly thereafter!

 

b. Ran Memtest again, and this time I got more errors, which seemed to point to an address that I thought might located in the first RAM stick, (I’m by no means a memory expert – the failing address seemed to be in the first 2GB so I concluded, probably wrongly, that it must be a chip in the first stick that was bad). I removed the stick, and shuffled the other two to the front of the memory slots, ran Memtest – no errors, but the crashing hasn’t been resolved either.

 

c. I ran Memtest on each stick individually for 10+ tests on each using the same memory slot on the mobo. Again, no errors are reported by Memtest, but it is still crashing and I am still getting event log error codes that indicate a fault with the memory!

 

d. Put all the RAM back into the machine, ran Memtest, and we’re now back to a whole wall of red, i.e. memory errors.

 

There seems to be no consistency to these errors. Sometimes it will pass the Memtest run with no errors, most times I am seeing multiple errors within the first 20% of Pass1.

 

I checked the Corsair memory configurator before buying this RAM to install in this mobo – it’s compatible, or so Corsair says. I have checked that the RAM version and lot numbers match – they do. I don’t know if there are any settings in the BIOS that I need to change to make this work but I was led to believe that XMP does all the necessary changes by itself. . I have reseated the memory and switched the sticks around – no effect and it still fails at that same address, as far as I can tell.

 

I’m including a screenshot of the kit being tested, which as you can see, is failing. Please take a look at the settings as that’s what XMP seems to think works for this memory. Nothing is overclocked and the failsafe BIOS defaults are loaded.

 

So, can anyone tell me – is this memory defective and do I need to RMA it? Can I even RMA it if I have chucked away the original packaging (there was no need to suspect the memory at first so I happily threw away the box it came in)? Do my settings needs tweaking? What have I missed??

 

Thanks in advance.

Gordon

[trackrat]

Make sure that you have the latest BIOS as this is how RAM compatibility issues are often resolved. In BIOS you can try upping your QPI voltage to 1.3 V and confirm the RAM latencies are 8-8-8-24 with a command rate of 2T.

 

XMP profiles are not guaranteed to work. They are a best guess at what might work for many people. Each system is different so on occasion you need to manually set the BIOS options to get a stable system. You can also try re-seating the CPU and Vid card if the above doesn't help.