Z440 memory slot & cooler issue.

[jtshep]

Evening all. Sorry for the long post.

Hoping someone can help me.

Purchased a used Z440 the other day. All has been well so far.

Today I was told I had my RAM in the wrong slots [slot 1 & slot 3 according to the inner panel & whitepapers]

According to the white paper with 2 RAM sticks [4GB each] I need them in slot 1 & slot 8. So I corrected this & swapped one of them over. Pressed the power button and got the beep / LED memory error. 

So double checked I had the correct DIMM slots and I did so tried again with no luck.

While I had the memory cooler off, I looked at the writing on the motherboard itself next to each DIMM slot and it's totally different to what the whitepaper & inner panel said. 

Whitepaper says while looking from above

2,6,4,8 [CPU] 7,3,5,1 

What the motherboard reads is

8,6,4,2 [CPU} 7,3,5,1

So I fitted the RAM according the the motherboard - and great it now boots up. But I've not got another irritating issue.

The memory cooler now runs at full speed all the time. Absolutely no idea why! It was never running at full speed with the memory in slots 1 & 3.

Does anyone have any idea why? Is this normal speed for it? I know you're only meant to have the cooler fitted if more than 4 DIMMS installed but it came with the system because I will eventually be upgrading to more RAM. Or not if it's going to be running at full speed!

Many thanks 🙂 

[DGroves]

I don't think you are understanding the correct load order

Load the memory modules in order of size, starting with the largest module and finishing with the smallest module

Each channel includes two DIMM sockets; black and white connector pairs represent a channel. The DIMMs should be loaded first in the black sockets and then in the white sockets. The DIMMs should be loaded starting with the DIMM furthest from the CPU, with the first DIMM loaded in the socket on the right side of the system and alternate sides of the CPU. if you had 4 dimms the same size  load order is 1,3,6,8 if you had 2 dimms the same size  load order is 1,8 if you had 3 dimms the same size  load order is 1,3,6

[DGroves]

as for the fan, check the fan header/wiring connections  and if ok note that HP uses a thermal ambient sensor in the power switch cable and when this fails the case fans ramp up to 100% speed

the cpu fan is on a different temp monitoring circuit  default fan speed can be set in the bios and should be the at the lowest setting towards the left of the scale shown

check cpu temps, try lightly pressing down on the cooler, does the cpu temp decrease? (use a app to read cpu temp)

if so clean old paste off heatsink/cpu and reapply thermal paste to cpu and reinstall

[jtshep]

Hi DGroves,

Thanks for the detailed reply.

As previously mentioned I have 2 sticks of 4GB [8GB total] Looking at the HP tools I can see the spec of the RAM and both match exactly.

One stick is Micron - 9ASF51272PZ-2G1A2

The other - Hynix - HMA451R7AFR8N-TF

Regarding the layout of which sockets I have done exactly what the inner panel and white papers said but unfortunately they are in the wrong order as I've mentioned. According to the white paper I have physically have  my ram sticks currently in slots 1 & 2 not 1 & 8.

If I am to put the ram sticks in slots 1 & 8 according to the white paper it doesn't boot. I'll try and get a picture of the motherboard so you can see what slots my ram sticks are in.

Fan wiring is fine. I don't think there is an issue with the thermal sensor as the memory cooling fans were running quite before I moved my ram sticks. In my previous post I said my ram sticks were in slots 1 & 3 originally and never had any fan issues. Now I've moved the ram to the correct slots they now run at full speed.

Temperatures seem absolutely fine by the way.

Appreciate your help!

[jtshep]

This is what HP currently reports.

[DGroves]

in my original post to you i included a link to the HP PDF on the z440 memory slot numbering and ram placement

however a HP mod removed the link stating............................

( and i quote his reply in full only leaving the HP link and the moderators  name out)

[--- As the rules goes we can't post manuals or url containing it, so I removed from your post. -----]

so i guess you will have to locate the information on your own ..................

what i will say is that with the cpu being in the center,..... slots 1 and 8 are the ones furthest from the cpu on each side

[Z440Roger]

Regarding the memory fan you can remove it if you want to. The memory fan is only required if you have more than 4 DIMM´s installed.

Since you have it you can keep it, but if you cannot get the fans running at normal speeds it can be good to know that removing the memory fan unit won´t harm anything and it is still a supported configuration of the Z440 with 4 DIMM´s installed.