Hey everyone, I really need some advice! I recently bought a PC for R$574 from Shopee because I needed it for my programming studies. Everything was working great for the first three weeks, but then I decided to upgrade with an 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Kingston RAM stick to make it dual-channel with a total of 16GB. After the installation, things went south—my PC would run for a few minutes before losing video and connection to all peripherals (like the keyboard and mouse), although the fan and lights stayed on.
Interestingly, the issue didn't stop even after removing the new RAM; it just took longer to manifest with the original RAM. I noticed that the new stick is much bigger and green compared to the old one. I've tried various troubleshooting steps like removing the BIOS battery, reformatting the computer, and switching the SATA SSD cable to a different slot, but the problem continues. Any suggestions on what I should do next? Thanks for your help!
(P.S. Sorry if my English isn't perfect, I had to translate everything since I'm Brazilian.)
Here are my PC specs for reference:
- SKU: Mancer-Home-MKT-31296
- Brand: Mancer
- Processor: Intel Core i5 3rd Generation (4 cores, 4 threads)
- Graphics Card: Intel HD Graphics 2500 (Integrated)
- Motherboard: H61 - TGT (Target), DDR3
- Memory: 8GB DDR3
- Storage: 120GB SSD
- Power Supply: 200W, Bivolt
4 Answers
You can’t really infect RAM from one chip to another, so I suspect there's a pre-existing issue. Test the working RAM stick in the other slot and see if that improves stability. It could be a faulty slot. I’ve seen this randomly fix issues before, no idea why, but if it works, it works! In general, if you can, upgrade using two identical RAM sticks to avoid compatibility issues.
Be sure to check that none of the pins in the RAM slots are bent! If they are, you might have serious problems with your motherboard, which I’ve seen happen before when repairing computers.
Try unplugging your PC, then switch the positions of your RAM sticks. Wait a moment before plugging it back in and turning it on. If it takes longer to boot up, that’s a good sign; it means it's trying to adapt to the new configuration. If it doesn’t start at all, it could be a different problem entirely.
How many memory slots does your motherboard have? That can help determine if you're facing a slot issue.
There are 2 slots available.