Damaged Ram Slot
sfbayzfs
Active Member
3) You have a damaged motherboard RAM slot. In which case, test it in sets of two (making sure to use the 1+3 slots or 2+4 slots for correct duel channel), then keep with just two memory sticks (not 3 or 4 - 3 will disable duel channel and 4 is physically damaged and probably can't be repaired without a motherboard replacement). The RAM socket would need to be removed and replaced as its damaged. This level of repair can't be done by a DIY person as you need specialized equipment to remove the socket so as not to damage the logic board and you also need access to the part which is not easy in this case as the part is not available.
I have a lot of system building experience, and generally held the belief that bad RAM slots on motherboards are uncommon. The first one I encountered was a couple of years ago - I opened up a brand new ITX celeron board and I eventually discovered that one of the RAM slots was bad. The motherboard wouldn't boot with any RAM installed in one of the two RAM slots on the motherboard - remove RAM from that slot, and the system booted fine with RAM in the other slot only. (Of course I had been storing the board for long enough that it was out of warranty, but that's another story...) I suspected a bad solder joint or tin whisker somewhere on the bad RAM slot, but my soldering iron was misplaced a while ago, and a visual inspection of the underside of the board looked OK.
I have been testing more boards than I used to over the past year, and I have found a number of other boards which have bad RAM slots, so I was wondering how many bad RAM slots others here have run into on otherwise good motherboards.
This can usually be solved by re-seating the RAM or switching the slots the RAM sits in, but if not, this could indicate that you need a replacement stick. Those are three fairly definitive problems to watch out for, but there are still some other warning signs to look out for; however, these other signs could be because of a different problem. HP Slimline Desktop - 260-a010 (ENERGY STAR) OOBE, 4 GB RAM installed on the PC by default. I am looking to upgrade the RAM to 16GB Before doing that, I wanted to check both the RAM slots, (motherboard has only 2 RAM slots.) I placed the 4GB RAM on the secondary slot and the PC did not boot or det. Replace the 1 ram (in the laptop) with the other ram in your laptop bag. If the laptop boots ok, then the ram's good and maybe the ram slot is really damaged. Posted 8 years ago.
Also, has anyone ever successfully fixed a bad RAM slot, say with a solder reflow?
So far, in terms of failure modes with bad RAM slots, either any RAM in that slot is not recognized and ignored, or else the system won't boot with any RAM in that slot, either locking up during POST or black screen before POST, sometimes with beeps. Any time I have had memtest rack up errors, I have eventually traced it to an actual bad stick of RAM, but has anyone else noticed bad RAM slots causing other symptoms?
On dual processor Xeon boards I have further findings:
- If the blue (primary) RAM slot in a channel is bad, that whole channel is unusable
- If the first blue slot for a CPU is bad, that CPU socket is unusable
- If a non-blue slot is bad, usually only that slot is bad