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The Dreaded Red DRAM LED...

Retired
Not applicable
Just finished a build to only encounter the commonly threaded "Red DRAM" indicator LED with no boot/no video whatsoever. I have followed many of the remedial steps posted including: resetting CMOS (2nd attempt also removed the battery) and have whittled my RAM down to one which is now finally seated in the last slot (no. 4- farthest from the CPU).

Any suggestions?

ASUS Crosshair V Formula AMD 990FX ROG
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (HDE00ZFBGRBOX)
CORSAIR Vengeance 4G x2 (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9)
POWERCOLOR Radeon HD 6870 x2 (AX6870X2 2GBD5-2DHG)
CREATIVE LABS X-FI Titanium Fatality Champ (70SB088600007)
CORSAIR Obsidian 800D Full Tower (CC800DW)
ULTRA X4 1600W Modular Power (U12-40500)
85,695 Views
9 REPLIES 9

chrsplmr
Level 18
N, Can you get into the bios at all? Did you set it manually
to 1066 or 1333 to see if it boots?
And if you can get into the bios have you gone through the
other settings...ie: is the hd set to ide? Are you sure its
hang'n on the ram led..or is that the second go round of the
lights? I had to change the hd settings to get past here...
in the beginning....
Just trouble shooting out loud.
When we get to the right question, it will answer itself.
Best of Luck.c.

Legi0ns
Level 7
Nauhaus wrote:
no video whatsoever


I took this as the member never made it to BIOS.
MOBO: CVF
CPU: AMD Phenom II 1100T
Cooler: COOLER MASTER Hyper N 520
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) CMZ8GX3M2A1600C8
GPU: 2x XFX HD-695X-CDFC Radeon HD 6950 2GB(Crossfire) .
SSD: Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F120GB3-BK 2.5" 120GB SATA III
HDD: 1TB 7200 SATA
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
PSU: Thermaltake Black Widow 850W
Case: Antec Nine Hundred MID - 6 Excalibur R4-EXBB-20PK-R0 120mm Case Fans + 200mm top fan.

chrsplmr
Level 18
Thats what I was thinking too, so I asked.
More wonderments I have, what hd are you using?
Do you have both gpu's in? (Excuse me, I mean no disrespect of your abilities..the simplest things sometimes are it.)
Use (1) @ first.
I see you tried the jumpers..but did you shut down and try the reset on the output panel?
(Sometimes vendors..have put rma's back in stock..I registered one, C4E, that they said was
already registered..how could that be from a new board...unless?)
Can you try other ram, just to get into the bios... Im still thinking this is the second go around
of the lights...and its hang'n because of the hd setup... mine did.
One of the more tech savy guys may have other ideas..but this is all I can come up with..
More questions than answers....hahahhaa...always.
The best answers, not just computers, life in general, lead to more, and more important questions.
One last question..and now that your down to 1 stick, 1 lane...have you tried all 4 sticks to
rule out 'its just bad ram'?
I rma'd my first V to newegg..crossRMA..by the time the replacement came..I had the other
one ROG'n...I can't let a board that wont boot sit..
It's like a chess board...it keeps calling you back..one more move..and...checkmate.
((I informed newegg of this..and they said, 'well, pick one and send the other back.))
((So did I pass up the challenge of the new one for the one that was working?....NOT...and this one is
even better...now.)) c.

Retired
Not applicable
chrsplmr:

GPU is in. It only occupies one slot as it is a factory hardwire-linked SLI on a single card platform. Also, it was reaching (and sticking ) on the DRAM during the intial boot cycle.

I hadn't yet tried the outer reset so I just did it. Now is hanging on the CPU red LED...ha. Now what?

Retired
Not applicable
UPDATE......

Without changing a thing other than unplugging completely because I was about to start pulling components out- I restarted just for kicks. So, it cycled through once and on the second boot cycle it now hanging back on ol' DRAM led. There must a clear problem that can be deduced from these sequences.

Come on....moderator, your loosing an ASUS customer here!

Retired
Not applicable
UPDATE......

Well, for no reason other than random. Off/On yielded video and prompt to enter BIOS for which it would not respond having even indictated all connected devices accurately (it knew the keyboard was there). Boot Device LED red of course.

Off/On again and we're back to ol' DRAM led.

xeromist
Moderator
If you can get your hands on another memory module then I would give that a shot just to see if you could make it into the BIOS. If you can't do that though then I would just RMA the thing. If you can't post then you can't really do much in the way of troubleshooting. Start with a fresh board that doesn't have this problem.
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

Shamino
Moderator
try just pressing the normal reset button when that happens

Retired
Not applicable
It might be a pain but have you tried re-seating the CPU? My friend had a similar issue and he managed to get it working by doing this.