All Options Are Greyed Out on Easy Tune

Hello folks,

I didn't want to create a new help thread as I know there are many, but I have spent several hours trying to find more information on a problem I encountered right after I started trying to OC my RAM, and I haven't come close to finding a similar situation elsewhere that I could use as a starting point to figure this out. It's difficult to even find the terminology to search for it correctly. If someone can help me with finding some information about this issue, it would be greatly appreciated.

Short summary: I used easytune to implement a very small OC on my CPU and RAM. Then the LED bars on the DIMMs started going out. Then the SPD info shown in CPU-Z and HWinfo64 became corrupted. Then the system started failing to shut down properly. The more the hardware information gets queried, the more corrupt it gets. I'm now out of my depth and seeking assistance.

Full story:

I assembled a brand new computer a couple days ago.

Aorus TRX40 Xtreme (Rev 1.0) motherboard, Threadripper 3970x, EVGA 3080Ti ftw3, Seasonic TX-1000, (4) Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus's 2TB NVMEs.

For the RAM, I am using (2) identical kits of G.Skill TridentZ Royal (16gb x2) CL19 4000MT/s memory. It is the F4-4000C19D-32GTRS kits, for a total of 64GB of memory in 4 DIMMs. From the information I have found, the kits seem to be manufactured with Samsung B-die. They are not on the mobo's QVL, but other nearly identical TridentZ kits (same technical specs, but different cosmetic options) are on the QVL.

Computer worked fine until last night. Finished installing all my software yesterday (mostly games, but also some productivity software, stuff for statistical computing, as well as various pieces utility software, including Gigabyte's). Updated the BIOS to the F5 version, that went fine also. All was well with everything in stock configurations. I had downloaded CPU-Z and GPU-Z just to quickly look at hardware info to make sure everything was recognized correctly, and at this point every DIMMs info was correct in CPU-Z -- all the SPD info was 100% accurate -- along with all the other hardware's manufacturer data.

So I decided that I wanted to begin OC'ing with small changes to the CPU and memory. Unfortunately, at the time I did not know how bad the reputation is of Gigabyte's motherboard software.

I made the mastodonic mistake of opening the Gigabyte appcenter and installing Easytune, and then made the incalculably greater mistake of actually using it.

Specifically, I used it with the 'auto OC' option on the CPU, which adds 200Mhz to the all core boost from the baseline of 3.7ghz - nothing particularly noteworthy there - and I then used the auto OC feature for the RAM to turn on XMP. That was it, nothing else. It wound up actually being more like XMP-lite, because it didn't increase the RAM to 4000MT/s , I kept it synced with the FCLK and didn't raise that above 1800, so the XMP profile went to 3600MT/s - still well short of what the XMP spec for these kits is rated to.

Within a few minutes of this, I noticed 1 of the DIMMs had it's LED bar go out. I thought it was strange, but didn't investigate it immediately. At the time I was busy trying to find information on how to best OC the 3970x (if at all). That led me to reading about Ryzen Master as a better replacement for Easytune. Info about Ryzen Master led me to also looking at Ryzen DRAM calculator (cause all the cool people with blue checkmarks and lots of subscribers on youtube told me to just use it and it'll be totally fine guy). Reading up on the DRAM calculator and how to use it properly led me to u/RonLazer 's post here https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/mcfkan/psa_please_stop_using_the_dram_calculator/

After reading everything in there, and going deeper down the memory timings rabbit hole, I realized how many stories there appear to be of Easytune wrecking people's shit, and that the LED bar going out that I noticed late last night might be indicative of a bigger problem. So I opened Easytune and set everything back to normal. This appeared to go fine; it accepted my reversions to factory default settings, and after a brief pause to apply the settings it looked like they were accepted -- back to stock JEDEC specs. The LED on one DIMM was still out, but I figured that would be fixed maybe after the next restart. After reading more about OC'ing I then decided to get HWinfo64, along with more benchmarking and stability testing software so I could OC properly, 1 timing at a time. Then I opened HWinfo64. Imagine what a pleasant surprise it was when some of the memory's SPD information was scrambled beyond recognition.

I spent the next 12 hours running Windows Memory Diagnostic tool on extended mode, and trying to google this problem. System rebooted when diagnostic tool was done, I found the report in event viewer, and after 12 hours of waiting it found... nothing. At this point, 3 of the 4 DIMMs light bars did not work, and every time I open either CPU-Z or HWinfo64, the SPD info is re-scrambled, and a new slot's data disappears completely. At this point I downloaded Thaiphoon Burner, and upon using it to read any of the slots to construct a report, it froze completely. Tried to shut down my computer the normal way, and it would only complete a partial shutdown. Had to use the power button to get it to turn off completely. After reboot I checked in BIOS and the task manager; they still showed I have 64gb of RAM running at 2133Mhz.

Next I unplugged the computer, took out all the DIMMs and reinstalled them in different slots. On the next bootup, they lit up like a Christmas tree. I thought that might have fixed it, but upon entering the windows desktop and trying to open any program that accesses SPD data (HWinfo64, CPU-Z, Thaiphoon Burner), LED bars will randomly go out 1 DIMM at a time, each time the hardware info is queried by a new instance of a program, until only 1 remains. Simultaneous to the LEDs going out, 1 or 2 DIMM's SPD info will become corrupted, and then vanish altogether, each time it gets queried by a new program.

This link is to a screenshot collage of HWinfo64 and CPU-Z as of a few minutes ago. As you can see in the pic, even if I open up 2 successive instances of CPU-Z one after the other, it results in the 2nd instance having less data than the first, and the data is even more corrupt and non-sensical.

HWinfo64 on left and at top-right, CPU-Z concurrent instances at bottom right

https://imgur.com/a/4jiLKlZ

But in the BIOS, everything shows up mostly fine (pic here, all the banks populate identically to the A2 bank shown on screen), the only thing missing is module serial numbers.

https://imgur.com/a/rw1xdkz

And in task manager it still shows me with 64gb of memory available.

After moving the DIMMs to different slots I uninstalled the easytune application and the easytune engine, and then forced a few reboots. Still the same problems. LED bars are all lit up on reboot. But immediately upon opening any program that collects the RAM's hardware info, the info becomes corrupted and the programs lose their ability to recognize any of the DIMMs, one at a time, in a seemingly random order.

Functionally, the computer works. But I can't even get Thaiphoon Burner to produce a report (it just freezes up), and the computer no longer shuts down properly (i.e. it won't fully complete a shutdown cycle - the mobo, GPU, and case fans stay on w/ their LEDs lit up - I have to hold down the power button to get it all the way off).

I dare not try to tamper with anything further. I don't know how to diagnose what is causing the problem, much less how to correct it, and can't find any analogous information about anyone that has posted with a similar problem.

Sorry for the encyclopedia. First time asking for help on a public forum. I've been up a very long time trying to find out how to fix this.

hagencomentse.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/t9sp4r/i_tried_to_use_gigabyte_easytune_and_i_now_regret/

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