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Need assistance interpreting strange behavior and results.

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  • Need assistance interpreting strange behavior and results.

    I've been having an issue lately with random freezing of the entire computer where I'm pretty much forced to hard boot (no BSOD at any time). It would happen at the oddest of times, sometimes while I was streaming a video game, others when the computer was idle and the last one that made me want to dive deeper is while the computer was in the Windows loading screen.

    I was able to rule out some of the more simple things like apps and temperature issues which led me to MemTest. I went about halfway through a MemTest 4.3.7 with 8 errors when I realized my RAM frequency was 1333 but was supposed to be 1600. I also realized my CPU was at 4019Mhz when it was pacaked as 3.6Ghz. I looked around the bios and everything was set to "auto" and I selected "Optimized Defaults" to try to fix the overclock. but I'm not able to adjust anything regarding the CPU. I don't know much about overclocking, so I'm not even sure why it's up so much. I messed with it a long time ago, but decided I didn't know what I was doing so left it with whatever I did. Anyways, I found a feature called (Extreme Memory Profiler(X.M.P)). When I adjusted it to profile1, it seemed to bump up the RAM to 1600. (see pic) though now when I reverted the setting back to "Disabled" it stays at 1600. I figured I should run the test with the accurate timing and this time it booted into MemTest 7.5 and returned 5 errors within the 4 different passes.I didn't get a pic of the test errors because I assumed it was in the first picture.

    So onto my questions. Do the errors I received with MemTest reflect the random freezing? Why am I unable to adjust my CPU clock and could that contribute to the issues I've had? What should I do as my next few steps to ensure I do this properly?

    Gigabyte - GA-990FXA-UD5
    AMD - FX-8150 3.6GHz 8-Core
    Corsair - Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600

    Apologies for my lack of knowledge in this... I really should do better in understanding what each component of my PC does and how to adjust them accordingly. Thanks in advance for any replies and help!

  • #2
    The screen shots show that you have a FX-8350 CPU. But in your post you claimed it is a 8150.
    4Ghz is the correct base speed for a FX-8350.

    Memtest86 doesn't report the current RAM frequency, it reports what the RAM claims to be able to support. So it saying 1600 is normal, even if the BIOS says 1333 current speed.

    So to me it just looks like you have bad RAM. Try testing 2 sticks at a time.


    • #3
      Thanks for your reply, David. I'm embarrassed I didn't catch the discrepancy in the CPU speed earlier. I had a master build list on PC Part Picker I made ages ago that had the wrong CPU.

      So with the RAM testing, is the idea just to isolate the bad sticks and then replace them?


      • #4