please tell me what i am doing wrong (with my hackintosh)

[solidgreysky]

friends, i hope someone can read my tale of woe and offer me some advice. i have been running a hackintosh based on an Asus Prime370A and Intel i7-8700 processor with 32GB of RAM. and for the past few years, it’s been totally trouble free. but then i moved from one apartment to another, and here my story begins.

i moved into a new apartment and powered up my machine. i plugged in a USB cable, heard a tiny click and then the machine powered off, which was definitely unexpected. i tried to get it to power up again but the machine was totally dead. OK, so I’m thinking something electrically bad has happened and it’s the power supply that's dead…which was a thermaltake RGB750W. i bought a new one and installed it, and now the machine will power up but i can’t boot and post. so now i’m thinking it’s the motherboard (ASUS Prime 370A), i buy another one and installed that. try to boot the machine, noooope. still can’t post.

OK so now I’ve replaced the power supply and motherboard and can’t boot and post. seems pretty weird. so i uninstall the graphics card (which was the only card in the machine), and of course the machine still won’t post. so what’s left? i replace the CPU (Intell i7-8700LGA1151) and CPU fan. the machine still won’t post. What is happening? ok, so there’s only one thing left to do, right? replace the RAM. so i order 64Gb of new RAM (same exact model: GSkill DDR4-3200). i put the RAM in and … can’t post!

so now i feel like i have basically bought a new machine. the only thing that hasn’t been replaced is the case. all the hard drives are disconnected, and i disconnected all inessential cables from the motherboard (like the speaker, power switch, etc). the only cables going to the motherboard at this point are the power supply, and the CPU fan. i'm not even trying to get into the MacOS, just to get to the bios screen! so i try removing all but one 16Gb stick of RAM. can’t post.

i try all the slots, and guess what? with 16Gb of RAM i CAN post if it’s in slot B2…if it’s in any other slot, i can’t post. if i add another stick to any slot other than B1, it doesn’t work. now that’s odd…the manual states that you should optimally use slots B2 and A2. but only the B channel seems to work. any other RAM configuration won’t work. i saw some thread online about loosening the CPU fan…seemed far fetched but i tried it anyway, no luck.

so now i have a brand new machine, that still won’t use 32Gb of RAM correctly since it’s not configured in the right slots, and i can’t expand to the full 64Gb that i ordered…the machine won’t post. despite having nothing connected to the mobo and all the components are brand new.

please, tell me where i’ve missed a step. fwiw i have done a lot of CMOS resets here along, and it has made no difference. i've also updated to the latest bios version (no help), and rolled it back to a version that i used to run with 32Gb of RAM (also no help). i’m hesitant to buy any more new parts since so far i’ve spent nearly a grand and gotten exactly nowhere. but the new M1 mac pros are still not out, so i’m not really wanting to do an upgrade at the moment. i desperately want this machine back up and running, esp with the full 64Gb of RAM, but i would be fine if i could just get 32Gb configured correctly.

can you see where i’ve done something wrong or overlooked something? i have spent a lot of time reading through the forums here and elsewhere, but to no avail. please let me know!

 

[antieatingactivist]

When you say it won't post, are you getting anything on the screen? just a black screen? Able to access the UEFI?

 

[solidgreysky]

nope the screen is black. can't reach the bios. there is a MEMOK! memory test light on the motherboard and it stays in "orange" mode indicating a problem with DRAM (if things are working the light should be white). but it only appears if the RAM is in any slot other than B2. it's very strange, if i add a stick to B1 it doesn't work, but i can put a 2nd stick in B1 (if B2 is full) and it will post.

 

[Gigamaxx]

nope the screen is black. can't reach the bios. there is a MEMOK! memory test light on the motherboard and it stays in "orange" mode indicating a problem with DRAM (if things are working the light should be white). but it only appears if the RAM is in any slot other than B2. it's very strange, if i add a stick to B1 it doesn't work, but i can put a 2nd stick in B1 (if B2 is full) and it will post.