Failed motherboard and memory, still problems

[VulcanRidr]

About 3 weeks ago, about the time the east coast got hit by hurricane Florence, my FreeNAS box quit working. My original configuration is as follows:

Pentium G3220 CPU
Supermicro X10SLM-F-O motherboard
2x4GB sticks of Crucial CT51272BD160B ECC RAM
A 430 watt EVGA psu
1 wdidled WD green 3TB drive
3 WD red 3TB drives
...All in a mid-tower case

The night that the storms from Flo came through, we took a power hit. I got up the next morning, and the NAS would not power up. I thought that the power hit might have fried the power supply, but it is plugged into an UPS, and nothing else plugged into it had a problem. The BMC heartbeat LED was blinking green, and the standby power led was on solid orange, but there was no fan spin, even on the pwr supply.

So I went out that next day and bought a Thermaltake 500 watt psu. Swapped it, and had the same indications on the board. BMC heartbeat, standby power, no fans power up.

So I found a Supermicro X10SLM+-F board, and moved everything over. When I powered it up all fans spun, the supermicro POST screen came on, and in the lower right corner, the number went from 15 to 55, accompanied by 4 beeps, which I learned was memory. So I tried switching the sticks, still got the 4 beeps. I then tried only one of the sticks, again four beeps The other one alone worked. So I have been running on 4GB.

A friend of mine sent me 4 Kingston KVR1333D3D4R9/4G sticks of ECC RAM. All of them (I tried combinations of 1, 2, and 4 sticks) and got 5 short beeps and 1 long.

I then bought another stick of Crucial CT51272BD160B on amazon, but when I plugged it in, I again got the four beeps from the POST.

I have pulled it out and am running on the 4GB, but would like to either get the Kingstons or the other Crucial working. Can anyone advise on what is happening with this board? Is it possible that it was another bad stick of Crucial that I got off amazon? A bad DIMM slot?

Thanks,
--vr

 

[joeschmuck]

So lets go over this in detail and we need to be very clear, we cannot make assumptions or remote troubleshooting will fail.

1) First of all, 5 short beeps followed by 1 long beep indicates No Memory Detected.

2) 4 short beeps indicates the Wrong Memory Installed.

3)When you install the RAM you should be populating both "blue" slots first. I'm not going to tell you that it won't run on a single stick however your user manual states the way the sticks should be installed.

What to do...
1) Strip your system down to the basic required hardware, Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Power Supply, and Display/Keyboard. Remove items not require to troubleshoot this problem.

2) Reset the BIOS to Factory Default, see if it boots up (passing POST) using the minimum amount of RAM (blue slots).

3) If your system boots up and you are only using a single RAM stick, add a second stick into the blue slot and try to bootstrap the computer again, does it pass POST?

4) If your system passes POST then install all your RAM and try to pass POST again.

5) If you do pass POST then you need to connect up either a CD player or use a USB bootable version of MEMTest86+ and run it, select all CPUs if that is an option. Once you have completed that then run a CPU Stress Test for 20-30 minutes to see if it passes.

6) If all of this works then you are good to put your system back together and give it a shot.

7) If something fails, report the failure in detail. You need to try all the RAM slots but you cannot use a white slot until the Blue slot is used first.

Lets talk UPS protection for a second... While the UPS may be great at protecting your power supply from a power surge, what about all the other components that are on your hardwired network? If you have a hardwired Roku in another room then it could have passed a voltage spike across the Ethernet cable and zapped your system and damaged one of many voltage regulators in the system. Hopefully it's just a confused BIOS. And if you can only get the system to run on a single stick of RAM, run the tests in step 5 to see if you have a stable system.

Good Luck!

 

[VulcanRidr]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your responses.

So lets go over this in detail and we need to be very clear, we cannot make assumptions or remote troubleshooting will fail.

1) First of all, 5 short beeps followed by 1 long beep indicates No Memory Detected.

Interesting. Because I tried populating one slot, the two blue slots, and all four slots in turn. This was with the Kingston memory.

2) 4 short beeps indicates the Wrong Memory Installed.

Would a bad DIMM in the second blue slot have the same effect? Because when I plugged one DIMM into the top (physically) blue slot, the machine comes up, but with the second DIMM in the second blue slot, I get the four beeps. Both the original second DIMM, and the one I just purchased off of amazon.

3)When you install the RAM you should be populating both "blue" slots first. I'm not going to tell you that it won't run on a single stick however your user manual states the way the sticks should be installed.

What to do...
1) Strip your system down to the basic required hardware, Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Power Supply, and Display/Keyboard. Remove items not require to troubleshoot this problem.

2) Reset the BIOS to Factory Default, see if it boots up (passing POST) using the minimum amount of RAM (blue slots).

3) If your system boots up and you are only using a single RAM stick, add a second stick into the blue slot and try to bootstrap the computer again, does it pass POST?

4) If your system passes POST then install all your RAM and try to pass POST again.

5) If you do pass POST then you need to connect up either a CD player or use a USB bootable version of MEMTest86+ and run it, select all CPUs if that is an option. Once you have completed that then run a CPU Stress Test for 20-30 minutes to see if it passes.

6) If all of this works then you are good to put your system back together and give it a shot.

7) If something fails, report the failure in detail. You need to try all the RAM slots but you cannot use a white slot until the Blue slot is used first.

Lets talk UPS protection for a second... While the UPS may be great at protecting your power supply from a power surge, what about all the other components that are on your hardwired network? If you have a hardwired Roku in another room then it could have passed a voltage spike across the Ethernet cable and zapped your system and damaged one of many voltage regulators in the system. Hopefully it's just a confused BIOS. And if you can only get the system to run on a single stick of RAM, run the tests in step 5 to see if you have a stable system.

Good Luck!

I will report back with the results of my troubleshooting.

 

[joeschmuck]

It is quite possible that you have a dead motherboard but report back and hopefully you will have good news.

 

[VulcanRidr]

Well, the news is less than good, but better than a sharp stick in the eye.

I tested A2, B2 (blue), A1, and B1 (black) with my Crucial CT51272BD160B ECC 4GB RAM sticks. I have three sticks of it, one "good" and one "bad" from the original board, and a third I bought from amazon to replace the "bad" one.

So the known good one booted fine in slot B2. Moved it to slot A2, and got 55/4 beeps on POST. The table belowshows the results of my testing:

1 == known good stick from original board
2 == suspected bad stick from original board
3 == stick purchased from amazon to replace 2

Code:

A1			A2			B1			B2		  Results			Capacity
 --			   --			  --			  1			Good			   4GB
 --				1			 --			  --			55/4 beeps	   --
 --			   --			  --			  2			Good			   4GB
 --				1			  --			 2			55/4 beeps	   --
 --			   --			  --			  3			Good			   4GB
 --			   --			  1			  2			Good			   8GB
 3			   --			  1			  2			55/4 beeps	   --

So all three sticks of RAM are good, which means that A1 and A2 are bad. Oddly enough, having sticks in B1 and B2 seems to work, at least until I can get this board replaced.

Thanks for the help figuring this out.

Edited to add code tags by JoeSchmuck

 

[pro lamer]

Could you please put the table in code tags so we can read it when mobile?

 

[VulcanRidr]

Just a quick update. I returned the replacement board, and got a replacement for it. This board works perfectly. Since I have 3 sticks of the Kingston RAM, I will be buying a 4th in the near future and fully populating the board.

 

[joeschmuck]

Glad to hear you got the problem fixed. Too bad it cost you money in the RAM you bought to get it operational.

 

[VulcanRidr]

Thanks Joe,

I actually only bought one stick. I'm buying another one to bump it up to 16GB... "I have too much memory..." said no one ever. :D