Very unstable all of a sudden. Failing memory?

net_slayer · 14 Jul 2009 at 13:38

First off, a little about my system. Im running a Q6600, 8GB (4x2GB) of OCZ PC6400 Platinum memory, ATI Radeon 3870 x2, and its all running on an Asus Maximus Formula motherboard. Ive had the build for a year and a half now and have never had an issue. Until now.

I hope you guys might be able to help with this one as its driving me nuts. About 2 weeks ago my PC started crashing with the BSOD and got very unstable. Every couple of minutes it would bomb out and sometimes fail to boot. I eventually i got memtest going and it pickup a glorious 500+ errors and in order to find out which stick of RAM it was, i started to test them individually but they all passed ok on their own. I then added one stick at a time and again all tested fine.

Eventually the next day it started playing up again, but this time is wasnt crashing (BSOD) as frequently. It was taking a few hours instead of minutes. Again back with the memtest and it only pickup up 1 error during the whole test so i started testing all individual sticks again. But damn, all tested fine when it was all reseated.

The machine had run fine for the best part of a week after that and now the BSOD's are starting again. Is there anything i can do to pinpoint the bad memory (thats if it is memory)? Seems whenever i empty it all out and put it back it seems to trick memtest. Is there anywhere in memtest that actually lets you know which slot its testing that has errors? I just want to make sure its the RAM before i order any replacements. I hope to god its not the motherboard.

Its also worth noting that all components are running at stock speeds and nothing is overclocked at all. Ive also stress tested the q6600 for about 16 hours just incase is was the cpu. Everything was fine.

Plec · 14 Jul 2009 at 13:47

How long are you running memtest for and are you using the boot disk version?

Ideally you need to test each stick individually for at least ~8hrs - this should, hopefully, identify a flaky stick. (if there is one.).

net_slayer · 14 Jul 2009 at 14:57

Im using the version that comes as an iso that you burn to cd and boot from. Ive tested each stick individually for about an hour or so, until memtest has told me everything has passed but i will do it for longer if it means finding out whats wrong.

Which is the best version to use? I see OCZ have a version of their own on their site.

Plec · 14 Jul 2009 at 15:56

You need to test for a minimum of few hrs - preferably leave running overnight testing one stick at a time.

net_slayer said:
Which is the best version to use?

Memtest86+ (2.11) - link

net_slayer · 17 Jul 2009 at 08:34

This is getting even more confusing. Shortly after my last post i had another BSOD and as the PC was rebooting i threw in the memtest cd and immediately i was getting hundreds of errors. I then powered of the machine at the wall and ran memtest again, this time it only came up with one error within a couple of minutes. Seems powering off flushed out whatever was causing the BSOD, but i still had problems.

As i was getting errors almost straight away i took out each stick one by one after each test to eliminate what memtest was complaining about. With only one stick left in the pc, memtest threw up the exact same error i d been seeing so i thought its gotta be that stick causing all the trouble so i removed it and have been using 6GB fine all week. Last night i was hit with another BSOD and again i ran memtest straight away and it went nuts with errors all over the shop.

At this point im really beginning to think my motherboard is dying. I find it hard to believe that more than one stick of ram has gone faulty at the same time. Anyway im now running memtest on single sticks for over 8 hours each. I set off a test before i left for work and i'll start testing the others overnight when i get home.

net_slayer · 19 Jul 2009 at 13:36

Right, ive tested every stick on its own for around 8-12 hours each, 3 passed and 1 had errors (this was the stick i removed a week ago but i tested again anyway). But im still crashing, to the point now where Vista is asking me to run the memory diagnostic tool which also fails with memory that memtest has no problems with. As a last resort ive swapped the memory with another machine of a similar spec. If it continues to crash like it has it can only be the motherboard. Now that will really suck as i dont think the Maximus Formula is sold anymore.