RMA ..... or something else?

Greboth

Greboth

Greboth

Soldato
Joined
6 Aug 2010
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Location
Birmingham
Hi there

I have a fault, which I am 99.99% sure it is but I want to check that it couldn't be something else before I RMA my stick of RAM.

Following on from my previous thread here.

I decided to unplug everything that wasn't necessary from my pc leaving me just mobo, cpu, ssd and 1 stick of ram. PC booted fine and I have slowly plugged everything back in and all was fine until I came to add my ram. I put stick 1 in slot 1, ran for couple days, then stick 2 in slot 2, stick 3 in slot 3. All fine with no hint of a problem. I put my fourth stick of ram in and next boot was bsod, unplugged the the others and tried the one stick on its own in different slots on MoBo always bsod. Unplugged it and put the others bak in and pc is back to normal. My doubt about RMA'ing it is because running it on memtest is passes with no error's so a couple of questions -

How accurate is memtest at finding problems with ram?
Could it be anything else?

Thanks for help on this.

Greboth.
 
Memtest86+ is fairly good at finding errors, but you need to leave it to complete at least 10 passes apparently. I recently had a set of ram that would complete 3 passes with no errors, but failed the blend test in Prime95 instantly & randomly threw up errors in other programs. Changed the ram to a different set & pc is now fine.

There's a different memtest for Windows here :

http://www.hcidesign.com/memtest/

You need to run 1 instance per cpu core, as it's not multithreaded.

Other programs to try Prime95 on large fft's or blend iirc, and OCCT on 'custom' with large data set.

Were you able to run memtest on the stick you suspect to be faulty ?
 
Thanks MoodyB. I ran memtest 86+ for a couple of hours which I think was 3 passes. Though I ran this of my memory stick. So I will run it over night and see if I can get any errors if I run 10+ passes.

From reading that link though, you run it in windows not as a bootable device (unless you buy it?) which is a problem for me as with the stick of ram plugged in I just get bsod and cannot get into Windows.
 
It is meant to be run in Windows. Was just meant as an alternative if memtest86+ comes up clear.

Just read your previous thread. I take it removing the realtek audio driver didn't help with the BSOD's ?

Regardless of that, if the pc runs fine with 3 sticks installed, but bsod's randomly with the last stick in, whether installed with the other 3 or on its own, then that stick has to be faulty surely.

I take it you're using a 4x2gb kit or ram, or is it 2 2x2gb kits ?

I'd run memtest only on the stick that's causing the bsod's, if you haven't already. You might find you only need 10mins, never mind 10 passes, if it crashes the pc constantly without reaching windows.
 
Thanks for the response.

No the audio driver didn't help, nothing software related seemed to help. My rig only became stable once everything got unplugged as per OP.

Yh, 4 x 2gb kit for em. That is what I was thinking, however before I RMA it I wanted to be sure there wasn't something obvious I had missed.

Well my pc is next to my tv and hopefully reach has been delivered today so I will keep an eye on it while playing reach. Last time though it didn't find any problems (though all 8gb was installed) but I shall run it with just the one stick installed.
 
It could be my CPU, hopefully not though as I don't want to have to go through the trouble of changing it, ram is so much easier lol. Main difference I noticed is that only the 1 stick in my machine it still bsod's. Worth keeping an open mind to it being my cpu though. Thanks for the link, I didn't many to find that thread on my searching of this error.

From memory I have tried the following combos in this order
1st stick - ok
2nd stick - ok
3rd stick - ok
4th stick - bsod
back to 3 sticks - ok for week
swapped 3rd stick for 4th stick - bsod.
4th stick in slot 1 - bsod
-auto restarted- 4th stick in slot 1 - Got black screen with mouse pointer but completely frozen.
4th stick in slot 2 - bsod

I will have a look at which slots are which memory channel, if it goes on colour then the channels will be slot 1/2 and slot 3/4 but without the manual I don't know for certain. I will try to 'borrow' my sisters pc to test my ram also, as its not a gigabyte board.

Getting so fed up with this now :( Thanks for the help so far MoodyB.
 
No problem.

I know roughly how you feel. Spent 5 days tweaking an overclock that wouldn't run stable due to faulty ram, even though the sticks passed 3-4 runs in memtest86, 20 passes in IBT. Put in different ram - pc / overclock now rock solid.

Ah the joys of pc tweaking...
 
Right little update on this.

Ran Memtest86+ from my memory stick again last night and over night (in total was just over 10 hours, 15 passes no errors. Restarted machine and as ever bsod as it boots up.

I looked at mobo manual too, mine has the same channels as the link (channel 0 - slots 1 and 3, channel 1 - slots 2 and 4) As I have already tested channel 0 just by having ram in my machine i will delibrately fill channel 1 to rule it out.

I guess it is looking more and more likely that it will be rma :(

Edit: Tried both channels and works on both so I guess it isn't cpu, time to rma this ram.
 
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