Intel Motherboards - Bad memory or bad motherboard? X99 Extreme6/ac

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Bad memory or bad motherboard? X99 Extreme6/ac

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Category: Technical Support
Forum Name: Intel Motherboards
Forum Description: Question about ASRock Intel Motherboards
URL: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=2995
Printed Date: 10 Jan 2025 at 10:10am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Bad memory or bad motherboard? X99 Extreme6/ac

Posted By: toehead2000
Subject: Bad memory or bad motherboard? X99 Extreme6/ac
Date Posted: 08 Jul 2016 at 12:12am

I have an Extreme6/ac motherboard that Ive been trying to install 8x16GB Kingston DDR4 2133 Mhz ECC RAM in, with a Xeon E5-2650 v3 cpu. When I have all of the ram in, I occasionally get long bursts of "Corrected Machine Check" errors, which show up in the window event viewer as "Event 47, WHEA Logger Corrected Machine Check." I will get tens of thousands of these in the space of a few minutes, during which my computer slows to a crawl.

From reading different forums I saw that some people think this might be related to the C-state modes on this Intel CPU, but I disabled everything I couldnt related to this in the bios and I still get the issue.

The issue is hard to reproduce and doesn't always occur. But Ive tried using just two sticks at a time, in the first two memory slots, and I never get the error. I've tried every pair of memory sticks this way. So my question is, which would you try replacing first, the RAM or the motherboard?

Replies:

Posted By: toehead2000
Date Posted: 08 Jul 2016 at 12:16am

I should also mention that I have the latest bios.

Posted By: parsec
Date Posted: 08 Jul 2016 at 2:37am

toehead2000 wrote:

I have an Extreme6/ac motherboard that Ive been trying to install 8x16GB Kingston DDR4 2133 Mhz ECC RAM in, with a Xeon E5-2650 v3 cpu. When I have all of the ram in, I occasionally get long bursts of "Corrected Machine Check" errors, which show up in the window event viewer as "Event 47, WHEA Logger Corrected Machine Check." I will get tens of thousands of these in the space of a few minutes, during which my computer slows to a crawl.

Just checking, but what is the latest UEFI/BIOS version for your board, that you are using?

Does your board and the X99 Extreme6, non-ac version, share UEFI/BIOS versions?

I ask because your board should have the Broadwell-E compatible UEFI/BIOS version available for download. I only see it listed in the Beta download area on the X99 Extreme6/ac page. That is unusual compared to other ASRock X99 boards.

The latest UEFI version on your board's download page is 1.90. The Beta version is 2.97.

IF you are using a Broadwell-E compatible UEFI version, there is an updated version of the Intel Management Engine software that is required. I don't see that version listed on the X99 Extreme6/ac download. You can get it on the standard X99 Extreme6 download page.

Since we don't know what version of Windows you are using, I'll link to the Windows 10 download page. The same file is used for all supported versions of Windows. The file is Intel Management Engine driver ver:11.0.4.1186:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99%20Extreme6/?cat=Download&os=Win1064" rel="nofollow - http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99%20Extreme6/?cat=Download&os=Win1064

The full model number of your Kingston memory would be good to know, so we can verify compatibility.

-------------
http://valid.x86.fr/48rujh" rel="nofollow">

Posted By: toehead2000
Date Posted: 08 Jul 2016 at 6:30am

Hi thanks for the reply. The memory is:

Kingston 64GB (4 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR4 2133 (PC4 17000) Server Memory Model KVR21R15D4K4/64

and cpu, which is a haswell:

Intel Xeon E5-2650 v3 Haswell 2.3 GHz 10 x 256KB L2 Cache 25MB L3 Cache LGA 2011-3 105W BX80644E52650V3 Server Processor

I will verify the UEFI/BIOS version and post a follow up. I don't have it in front of me at the moment.

I did not do much to verify compatibility with these specific components. It claims to be compatible with ECC memory and Haswell Xeons so I didn't look into it further, but perhaps I should have gone with a workstation motherboard.

Posted By: vacaloca
Date Posted: 08 Jul 2016 at 1:49pm

Had same issues, and for my case, it turned out to be a bad DIMM slot. Try testing with Memtest86 7.0.0 beta 1, which has support for DDR4 ECC testing. Move memory in slots. My bad slot was D1, which is the first quad channel -- every time I put a fourth or more memory DIMMs in, I'd get ECC errors in memtest after a few hours usually only on that channel/slot, and eventually right after the start of testing in that channel/slot. If only SOME DIMMs cause the issue, then it could be bad RAM. You'll have to test both the RAM and the slots to see what the true issue is.

I was able to test over a period of mornings and nights, and it took me a while to isolate it was a bad slot, because occasionally I'd have an error in another DIMM slot, but I never could isolate any particular bad DIMM. Only after it continuously failed seconds after Memtest did I realize it was a bad slot and thankfully managed to get a replacement board from a different retailer.

PS: I'm running CT32G4RFD4213's (32 GB ECC RDIMMs) on my X99 WS-E, and have tested up to 8x of those in the process of diagnosing if it was bad RAM or a bad slot... settled on 6 ;) Look up my previous posts in case you'd want to change your choice of RAM =) Price is comparable to what was (presumably) spent on the KVR21R15D4K4/64's assuming those are returnable still.

Posted By: toehead2000
Date Posted: 12 Jul 2016 at 12:01am

I was able to more consistently reproduce the error using memtest86 7.0 like vacaloca suggested, and this led to me tracking down a single bad DIMM. Previously I'd only tried an older version of memtest86, which apparently wasn't sufficient. Thanks for all your help.