Hi there,
These are my specs which I have been using for more than 5 years now:
- Motherboard: Gigabyte G1.Ssniper Z97
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 3.6GHz
- RAM: G.Skill Trident X 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-2400
My system has been working fine for most of the time until a few months ago. I started to get a POST code 32 (CPU PEI Initialization) and the system reboot itself constantly at POST code 32. I couldn't figure out the problem and eventually switched the 2 RAM sticks to the other 2 available slots and the system started working fine again...
A month ago this started to happen again and I did the same, switched the 2 RAM sticks back to the original slots. The system booted fine. I restarted and the system booted fine. I restarted again and the system continued to boot fine, good. However, powering the system down (or hibernate) and trying to power it back up, it went back to boot looping with POST code 32. I switched the RAM sticks again and it booted fine. Restarting the machine works. Powering it down requires the RAM sticks to be switched around to make the system boot (until I need to power it down or hibernate it).
During this time I tried clearing the CMOS via the button and the jumper pins, I took the battery out and even replaced it with a brand new but nothing seems to fix the problem. I used MemTest86+ and still nothing, no errors whatsoever have been reported, the RAM appears to be fine).
My RAM allows for overclocking and as far as I know I ran a few years with the RAM overclocked but a year or so ago the OS was a bit unstable so I turned the overclocking off (maybe this damaged the motherboard somehow). This to say that I bought new RAM, with the exact frequency my motherboard supports without overclocking and nothing, it didn't solve the issue, the machine still didn't boot without constantly switching the RAM sticks. So I returned the new RAM.
That's when I decided to try something new, I switched to the secondary BIOS, applied the defaults and the system booted. Powered it down, powered it back up, and it worked. Did this a couple more times and it worked every time. I've been running with the secondary BIOS and the default configuration for a month, until today! Now it happened again and I'm back at the RAM sticks switching dance to get the system to boot after powering it down.
I can't find many information about this error code online nor I can find many people reporting the same problem as me but I've read somewhere that the PSU could also be the culprit here? I'm not sure, how could the PSU cause all this?
I don't know what else to try to fix this problem. I wasn't looking forward to upgrade my motherboard, CPU and RAM so soon, not for a couple more years. But I'm not sure I have any other choice if I can't find a way to consistently fix this issue, or at least pinpoint the problem so I can weight all my options and decide what's best for me.
Any thoughts about this? What can I do?