Or by only putting one stick of memory in, or changing the slot you’re using.
I was assembling a computer and everything seemed to be correct, the fan would spin up, I’d get some lights, but there was no image on the screen, not even the BIOS. I saw someone else make this suggestion and didn’t think it was likely to work, but it did. First I just tried one stick, and it booted. Then I tried both sticks and it didn’t work, but I reseated and then it did.
(Also worth pointing out that your motherboard should have diagnostic lights which if you check the documentation may point out which component has an issue)
Thinking about Lemmy’s demographics many here may have heard of something like this, or have more helpful suggestions about troubleshooting which would be welcome. But thought I’d write out a little post about my experience to contribute to Lemmy SEO supremacy.
Many modern motherboards will also do memory training the first time you boot with new RAM sticks, and sometimes this is very slow. Your PC will boot to a black screen and behave exactly like it would with a dead CPU or RAM… there’s no visual feedback.
This once caught me off guard and I spent a good hour panicking trying to diagnose a non-existing issue. Sometimes, you just literally have to wait in a black screen for a while.
This seriously stressed me out when I put my last computer together. I was patient and waited hoping it would fix itself (which it did), but my heart sank when I didn’t see anything on the monitor.
Good to know this is what is happening. Some visual feedback would be nice.
This 100%. Had a buddy recently that went as far as buying an entirely new PSU and memory kit trying to troubleshoot over 3 days. He just needed to let it sit for about 15 minutes to memory train the first time.
I have never run into this with any builds, at least in the last 15 or so years. Is this a more recent thing, or am I now finding out that my first build, circa 2007 on my new DFI lanparty mobo, may have not been a defect and I’m just impatient? That was DDR2 and PATA for a time frame.
Yup, I put new RAM in a brand new laptop after booting it up only once previously. Boot it up, black screen. I got insanely scared I messed up the display to mobo ribbon or something. Nope, just was doing its RAM thing and sat on a black screen for like a minute before actually booting to bios
Didn’t know about this. How long are we talking, minutes, hours?
Anything from 30 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on your specific combination of RAM, CPU and chipset.
I put too way too much effort in this reply… Yes… it’s nerve racking, especially if you are resorting to BIOS flashback to boot the CPU on an older (new) board.
Can’t get visuals (except maybe leds/indicators on the motherboard itself) when your CPU is incapable of accessing the ram or the devices yet. All external devices normally communicate through the RAM. (And by external, I mean not on the CPU package) Yet, the CPU has to solve out this chicken-and-egg problem of how to progress from the cold-boot without knowing what external RAM is installed. There are plethora of timing/clock-cycle/voltage settings for one stick of ram, which are tested on POST. Establishing sane DDR5/4 parameters is non-trivial. (I think it is order of +20!, twenty factorial: 2432902008176640000, if there were no starting point of XMP, JEDEC etc.)
I use hand tuned settings for DDR4, and on cold boot, the BIOS adjust the settings which I didn’t forbid it to do. Unless I unplug the PSU from the wall, the BIOS won’t retrain the memory again. I suspect my settings still aren’t 100% stable. (over period of years) Non-cold-boot assumes the ram works 100% same on each power up. If some OC setting drifts past a threshold once the system is heat soaked or receives more EMI interference, this could provoke a crash/BSOD etc. in absurd theory having a busy wifi router next the ram could cause the bios to select more robust/conservative settings to counter the EMI interference. Would be fun to know, if this would be true.