I’m on the Framework 13 12th Gen Intel i7-1260p.
I dropped my Framework 13 and now its failing. Firstly i couldn’t make it boot, it showed a LED code red at “DDR initialized Ok”.
After disconnecting the battery reseating the ram it worked for 3 hours and then crashed, it hanged and then show artefacts on the screen. But at least i know the display or the input cover is not damaged.
I then tested it with memtest, it passed one pass and then at some point only errors.
I hope it is the RAM but I fear its probably the mainboard… Could the shock kill the mainboard or the RAM?
Sorry that happened. You might check the display cable at the mainboard and at the display end, as well as running memtest with one module at a time, in each slot - that will be time consuming, but may help you to narrow down if it is an issue with the board or with the ram. Best of luck.
This is what you should do. The memtest you ran has shown errors, so it’s almost certainly related to memory. Note which combinations of memory module and slot result in errors and which don’t. You can cancel the test as soon as you get a single error as that already indicates failure.
If the test runs fine with one module in either slot, it’s likely that the other module failed and you can simply replace it with a new module. This would be the cheapest way. If both modules fail in one slot but not the other, one slot is broken. You can take a close look at the pins and see if any of them look out of place and try and bend them carefully. If that doesn’t help, you’ll likely need to replace the entire board unfortunately, unless you’re skilled with PCB repairs.
This is my thinking off the top of my head; if the ram modules test out ok multiple times and in each slot then they and the slots are probably ok. Maybe the heatsink came partially dislodged which would show issues over a longer period of time as the machine heated up. Worse would be a component that has a small cracked solder joint that only starts causing issues after a longer period of time when the whole thing heats up.
It is hard to pinpoint what is going on without some low level feedback from the EC. Not that it is convenient, maybe taking everything apart and carefully putting it back together may resolve it. Just trying to think of what I would do in this situation to narrow down where the errors are coming from. Did someone decide the LED pattern for which parts are reporting fails on the POST?
If the RAM test fails, it’s a RAM problem.
How many RAM chips do you have? One or two?
Also look at the addresses of the ram test failures. If they are all even numbers, the problem is with only one of the channels. Similarly. If all odd.
If you swap the ram, still having 2 ram chips, and the addresses move from odd to even or visa versa, then one of the chips has failed. If the error does not move, then the mainboard is most likely at fault.
I can’t reproduce the ram errors for now despite trying memtest multiple times with multiple passes with each ram in each slot and the two ram in either slots, so I don’t know what is going on.
For now the system didn’t crash like it did before
It’s good sign if you cannot reproduce the RAM errors anymore, as it could be that the RAM was not properly inserted (possibly because the connector can have sustained some damage) but that you managed to get a good connection this time (maybe by inserting it more firmly, or in a slightly different way).
