[SOLVED] Rampage Extreme X48 Det Dram Isssue...

[Elloquin]

Ok so here's the story.

System Specs:
Air Cooling
Asus Rampage Extreme X48 Stock Bios
Retimmed and washer modded to the north bridge screws.
2 x 1GB Cellshock Blue 1866 DDR3
E8600
XFX 4890
Enermax 1050w Revolition PSU

I'll try to be as detailed as I can. Set the board up dead stock. Hung on Det Dram first boot. Cleared cmos via the button. Rebooted booted straight away. Loaded OS etc. Ran 20 passes of LINX passed just fine. Shut it down and needed the bench for another project. Came back to it again this past Sunday. Mounted the CPU cooler. Booted up straight away. Reinstalled OS. Tweaked OS a bit drivers, checked temps voltages etc. Shut it down. Came back to it next day. Board Hangs on DET DRAM. Hmmmm. Cleared cmos via puling the battery for 10 mins. Same thing. Pulled ram from slot a1 and left 1 gig in slot a2 boots just fine. Slot b2 boots just fine and both sticks either seperate or together boot fine in slots a2 b2. Board will not boot past det dram if slots a1 b1 are used either stick nor will it boot with the sticks in dual channel. Some how slots a1 b1 are unresponsive.

So far the only things other than striping down the board to cpu ram and video and trying to get it to boot are the only things I have tried. I also pulled the heatsink off the cpu and reseated it after checking for any bent/moved pins and it looks fine. I haven't had a chance to reinstall the heatsink and test it again.

Suggestions lol?

[zalbard]

I had a similar thing with my Gigabyte P965. One day one of my RAM slots just died. It worked fine for a year before that... Would not boot at all if there was something in that slot regardless of others. So I suppose it's a hardware malfunction.
Things to try... perhaps a different PSU or BIOS in case it's corrupted. I suppose you've already tried different RAM sticks.

[Elloquin]

Well it is fixed now and everything is working as it should again. Like I said I had it to the point where I needed to mount the cooler put the battery back on and try to boot it again. It did the exact same thing it had been doing. So I ripped it down and took it off the bench to give it a good look over. Everything looked fine PCB wise but I didn't like the way one of the solder points on the back of the mobo from the mosfets looked in relation to the backplate. I am using the Thermalright Venomous X (and have been all along lol). Took the mount off and made a few observations. 1. One long solder joint was making contact with the back plate. 2. There are several PCB traces that lead to the DIMM slots that are practically on top of one of the mounting holes on the Rampage Extreme. Now any of this being a problem I would think it would have shown up somewhere along they way either the first time it was mounted or the second let alone install an OS.

The Venomous X has a spacer that needs to be used for socket 775 (and I was) but it is apparently not enough for boards with long ass solder points Also I don't think after it is fully tightened down it prevents the metal "pads" on the back plate from making contact with the back of the mobo and putting pressure on those traces I mentioned. It caused no problems whatsoever on my Biostar X58 but then again the mounting area on that board is much less cluttered. At any rate I added some plastic washers to the back plate and reassembled everything. It booted straight away and boots dual channel in either set of slots as normal