After over a year of flawless service, I suddenly started getting a memory error on boot. BIOS beeps indicated a memory problem and the DRAM light remained lit. Black screen of death! Because of the lockdown, could not find a service center to fix the problem.
I cleaned all the DRAM slots and tried again - no luck. After over a week, I tried starting up again and this time I got the BIOS screen, was asked to save settings and restart. I did and it worked! I reinserted all 4 memory DIMMs and booted into the OS (Ubuntu Studio Linux). When I tried restarting the computer next morning the problem had returned. Clearing and re-saving the BIOS got me in but restarting took me back to square one! Frustrating!
I changed the BIOS battery to a brand new Duracell branded one. Now I get a different error message on clearing the BIOS and bootin (see attached).
"SATA mode selection must be changed to RAID mode"
I go in to setup and choose 'optimized defaults' and set boot order. Only the main SSD is connected all other drives have been removed.
Now it doesnt boot at all! Remains stuck on the boot screen! Restart the PC and I get the memory error beeps! Clear the BIOS and I get the same "RAID message"!
What is happening?
Configuration:
Motherboard - ASUS RoG STrIX Z390-F Gaming
CPU - intel 8700K
SSD - 500GB (Ubuntu Studio OS)
Graphics card - RTX 3060 Ti
RAM - 4 x Gskill 16GB
Detailed configuration:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bJgg7XGraphics Card and all Hard drives disconnected for testing. Only boot SSD.