Another dead stick: Bad luck or something wrong?

Greboth · 30 Sep 2010 at 21:09

Hi all

Just over a week ago I RMA'ed a pair of sticks of ram due to one being faulty. Got a new pair back, plugged in no problems. Enjoyed speeding round with all my ram in place, come home from work tonight and my PC wont even post, just sits in a restarting loop. It doesn't even get as far as registering signal on monitor before restarting.

Unplugged everything boots fine. Everything back in one at a time, its a stick of ram again! In different slots, different pairs, each memory channel etc. Its one stick of ram again. I am always careful with opening my case, flicking power switch to disapate any remaining charge, touching bare metal of case and wearing antistatic wrist band (I know these seem to be slightly frowned upon here for some reason but if I can minimise my chances of damaging components for a few quid I take it) so I can't see it being static. My voltage is on auto, which is 1.5V though corsair say it can go upto 1.65, I have increased to 1.63V without any change. My timings in bios are correct also. So I am at a loss to what it could be.

Which leads me to my question for you: Have I just got bad luck or is my system killing sticks of RAM somehow?

Edit: For reference, spec is in my sig and this is my exact ram

Greboth.

Cycrow · 30 Sep 2010 at 23:17

something is certinatly killing your ram, and as it was working before, its unlikly anything u did during install.

perhaps the ram slots on the motherboard are whats faulty and killing the ram ?

Greboth · 30 Sep 2010 at 23:43

That was a thought of mine that it could be motherboard but I am completely out of my knowledge base really so as to how I could go about finding the actual cause, I don't know

Edit: Just thinking, how many ways is there to kill a piece of ram? over volting or over heating?

Yellowbeard · 1 Oct 2010 at 18:32

Check your manual and see which slot to use for single module operation. Then, test each module individually in that slot using Memtest. Be sure to set the voltage manually to the setting listed on the side of the module.

Greboth · 1 Oct 2010 at 20:51

I can test the three working one (which pass), but I can't test the one that doesn't work. I can't even get to the boot menu to run memtest.

Yellowbeard · 1 Oct 2010 at 21:16

Greboth said:
I can test the three working one (which pass), but I can't test the one that doesn't work. I can't even get to the boot menu to run memtest.

In that case file an RMA. However, I'd be very suspect of what is causing the failures. I would NEVER make the claim we don't have defective memory because we do, like everyone does. However, it is exceedingly rare to have an user with 2 consecutive failures.

Greboth · 1 Oct 2010 at 22:24

Thanks for the replies Yellow Beard. I appreciate no one can guarantee their products 100%. But I know the reputation that corsair have and I respect the reputation hence my corsair ram, psu and cooler

The first stick I think was DOA as I suffered problems straight away, but I am also suspect that this is my second dead stick and that it worked for a week. As I said above though this is beyond my knowledge really as I could take guesses but I don't know what could kill ram or how you would go about testing the possibilities. I have been installing some new fans earlier so I took the oppurtunity to check each slot on my motherboard and I can't see any problems with them.

I am never one to rule out human error but I have taken every precaution I know of to make sure I didn't damage them and I can't see they got damaged while being slotted into the board. I guess my only choice is to rma the ram and hope it doesn't happen again because it would be a PITA to rma my motherboard.

Surveyor · 1 Oct 2010 at 22:27

Make sure you're not over volting the RAM.

Greboth · 1 Oct 2010 at 22:57

Surveyor said:
Make sure you're not over volting the RAM.

Greboth said:
My voltage is on auto, which is 1.5V though corsair say it can go upto 1.65, I have increased to 1.63V without any change.

I know though that you can check the voltage manually with a meter, though I don't know where to put the probes. I tried googling it before but never found a satisfactory explaination of how to so I haven't checked it.

Pulseammo · 2 Oct 2010 at 00:17

I'd RMA the RAM and if you can remember what slot the dead stick was originally in and it happens again then you'll know it's the board.

I suppose a wiring fault in the board could kill a stick, for instance if a pin on the slot carrying voltage was perhaps touching a pin on the ram meant for data transmission?

I'd imagine that'd be a pretty odd occurrence though as the slots themselves seem pretty rigid and the only other way I could imagine it happening was if two of the traces on the board were touching. Even then if this was the case you may even expect dodgy voltage getting back to the IMC on the CPU, so if you're CPU is fine then it's prolly a wrong theory.

It's anyone's guess really and there's no real way that you can test the board other than RMAing it or putting another stick in it

.

adrichardson81 · 4 Oct 2010 at 14:29

RMA the memory. Any idea if the 2 dead stick were from the same slot?

I had similar problems with my old rig - got through 2 lots of Corsair and 1 lot of Cell Shock within about 9 months. Replaced the Cell Shock with OCZ in the end and it was still running fine when I sold it 2 years later. Bad luck, I guess.