M17x R4 RAM Sleep Issues

[ajdrenter]

A while ago in one of my posts I mentioned that I was having an issue on my M17x R4 with sleep. Basically, the computer would lose power as soon as it entered sleep mode. I sort of forgot about this as I got used to turning it off. However, the other day I upgraded the RAM from the stock 16GB (Nanya I think) to 28GB. 28 because I had three 8GB Samsung DDR3L SODIMMS laying around, and one 4GB. The SPDs weren't exactly the same but they were all the same speed and timing. After installation everything worked fine. And all of a sudden.. sleep worked! The computer went to sleep, stayed asleep, and woke up properly. Honestly I was thrilled. I assumed the old RAM must have been faulty.

 

I really wanted to MAX the ram out to 32GB so I bought another Samsung SODIMM on Amazon and installed it no problem. Everything was working fine, including sleep, until about a day later. My issues started to return. I chased a bunch of software issues trying to solve it, including a firmware handshake event attributed to the Intel Management Engine and a Bluetooth power warning event. I ran multiple RAM tests with no issues including the built-in Windows Memory Diagnostic and Memtest86. I even swapped the power supply, GPU, Wifi card, keyboard, basically anything I had more than one of.

 

The only thing that resolved my issue was going back to 28GB. I tried a variety of slot configurations and I omitted the new stick from testing multiple times. So for now, the computer will stay at 28GB. Needless to say this has been an infuriating troubleshooting process. If anyone has experienced anything like this tell me your story and maybe we can figure it out. At this point I'm on the brink of buying a new mainboard and RAM kit.