820-3023 2011 MacBook Air Ram Issue. 3 Beeps

So i have a 2011 MacBook Air with the 820-3023 motherboard. Board turns on fine but has 3 beeps indicating a ram error. Board never had any liquid damage to it. Ram is getting the proper voltage so I think I have pretty much narrowed it down to a bad ram chip and figured I would ask you guys if there is anything else I should check before I ebay it.
 

aprendiz

Moderator
Could be a bad memory chip, bad communication with processor or processor itself.....
Maybe machine was dropped causing a broken solder joint.....
Are you sure about there is no water damage????
 
I have tried pushing on each of the chips individually and booting the machine to no avail and the machine shows no signs of being dropped. I'm pretty sure of no water damage no signs of any damage to the board.
 

larossmann

Administrator
Staff member
Sandy bridge airs are the shittiest boards to fix.

The best way to make anything off of this is to toss it on eBay. You could try heating the PCH to 150c for a few minutes and see if anything changes, but most likely this is junk. This is $169 when it works so removing every individual RAM chip and replacing them, only for it to be a bad PCH or some crack inside the PCB itself you can't see would be a real kick in the nuts.
 

dukefawks

Administrator
It could be a bad RAM chip or it could have been dropped cracking traces under RAM or CPU. This board is probably not worth the time and effort to track down the exact cause.
 

leonattpcs

New member
Question about the 3 beeps in that machine... In a macbook pro you could just remove the ram from, you could just take out the ram to find out which stick is a problem. Could you just remove the ram chips one by one to see if anything changes or do they all have to be on the board for the thing to boot, but then give the 3 beeps?
 

dukefawks

Administrator
If the RAM is soldered to the board all must be present and working. On some retina models you can get away by removing half of the chips, should be possible on 8GB or more models. Never tried it myself though, but in theory it must be possible.
 
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