Bad DIMM slot

[FrostyWinnipeg]

I'm working on a an HP S5610F Slimline desktop and it's been freezing in Win7 and even blue screened once. I restored it to factory image and its continued the problem. I suspected bad mem so I ran Memtest on it and it crashed. Using different DDR3 mem sticks and changing the slot usage I've narrowed it down to one bad DIMM slot.

I don't see any bad/leaking caps and I cleared the CMOS via jumper and defaulted the bios. Anything else I could try to fix the problem?

The board(H-Apricot-RS780L-uATX) supports 8GB(4GBx2) so it looks like 4GB is the limit with the bad slot. There's no chance I could use a single 8GB stick is there?

TIA

 

[Harvey]

You've done your homework. If it's still under warranty, time to RMA the machine.

If not, you may want to look closely at the contact pins in the failing RAM slot to see if any are missing, or if one or more is just bent out of shape. If it's just bent, either is isn't making contact, or it may be bent such that it's shorting against an adjacent pin. In either case, you may be able to straighten it enough to make proper contact with your RAM.

The only other possiblity is a bad solder connection to the RAM socket. If it's mounted with through hole pins, instead of surface mounted, you may be able to fix it by removing the motherboard and re-flowing the solder on each pin on the bottom of the board. This would be a very last resort, but if it's already failed, you won't be any worse off.

Good luck!

 

[Harvey]

If HP doesn't chage too much, you may want to replace the motherboard. Per this post by an HP tech on their forums, the part number for the replacement is 624832-001. You can contact HP at 800-474-6836 to order it.

Specs for your machine.

Another alternative may be to find an inexpensive replacement motherboard. Newegg has this Foxconn A76ML-K 3.0 for $44.99 + $4.99 shipping. It's the same size and looks to be similar board with more features, including a PCI-e 2.0 x16 slot if you want to upgrade your video and offload the video processing from your system RAM.

Caveats if you go for another board:

1. The product key for your HP branded copy of Win 7 may not install on a non-HP motherboard. You'd need a generic copy of Wiin 7.

2. The connections from the board to the front panel switches, LED's, etc. may be the standard format that accepts individual connectors, rather than the one used by makers of "department store" brands like HP, Dell, etc.

3. If you want to add a separate vid card, check to make sure there's a blank rear panel slot to allow access to it. Also, you may want to upgrade that dinky 220 watt PSU.