bad ram or bad motherboard?

[Archer75]

So I recently purchased a 3x 2gb memory kit for my PC. Specs in sig. I already had a 3x 2gb mushkin redline kit and the new kit is a mushkin blackline for a total of 12gb

After adding it i've noticed the computer to lockup, reboot or bluescreen. I ran the win7 memtest and it said everything was fine.

I then downloaded another memtest app that runs in windows that said two of the 6 sticks were bad.

Sometimes when booting up the computer it would only show I had 8gb instead of 12gb at the bios. And windows would report the same. Though CPU-z would see all the sticks.

So I RMA'd the sticks and am back to the original 6gb I had before I started. However sometimes when I boot up the computer it says I have 4gb and sometimes it says 6gb.

Nothing is loose. Temps are all fine. If the issue went away when I took out the new ram I would have chalked it up to just the ram. But seeing as I now have the issue with my previous ram which was working great i'm now wondering if it could be a motherboard issue?
Any thoughts?

 

[rflcptr]

Sounds like a case of the X58s.

What settings are you using the RAM at?

 

[Archer75]

Sounds like a case of the X58s.

What settings are you using the RAM at?

Well I tried setting it to XMP but it wouldn't boot. Setting everything to auto works. I also tried setting the ram settings to the specs of the slower blackline ram but nothing has improved stability.

I can set the bios to XMP with just the redline in.

I didn't have any issues prior to this. I suppose I could see if a bios update helps.

 

[drescherjm]

I would start out at the non overclocked setting of DDR3 1066. That should be what the BIOS does as default. Remember any setting higher than DDR3 1066 is an overclock of your memory controller on the CPU unless you have one of the 32nm i7s (970, 980, 990 or xeons) that have updated the memory controller to support DDR3 1333.