My one system fell to pieces after itially working ok, started having stutters and program crashes, then the whole O/S would lock up, . Then the registry corrupted. And every restore attempt afterwards made it worse ending up with blue screens, and then dying completely - doh!

Anyhoo, finally realised it was the RAM doing this (bit slow on the uptake this time ).

Ran microsoft memtest. Yup loads of errors
Ran Memtest86+. Same

Took out one stick, still the same
Took that out and replaced it with the one I previously removed and put it in the same slot. All ok
Removed the good stick and tried the duff one again, but in different slots, still duff
Tried more relaxed timings in the BIOS and slower clock speeds. Still Duff.
As one last check I tried it in another known working system of different spec. Still duff.

So I get the RMA, packed off both chips (it was a dual channel kit so came as a pair). I labeled on teh blister pack which one was ok and which one was faulty.

And guess what.

They report back to me saying they are perfectly fine.

Hmmmm How do most e-retailers test their RAM these days?

Or am I going mad?

 

I think some mem test programs are a bit old hat these days and not upto the job, ive seen very similar issues.

I later found my issues to be motherboard related and not the ram as i first thought.

 

I would believe that, which is why I tried it in a seperate system with different spec board with gave the same results.

I'm also using the very same system (which had the duff RAM) right now with another pair of sticks (borrowed out another system with a duff harddrive) of the same spec and both the test programs gave the all clear (even the extended test on the microsoft). I can't see how I can narrow it down any further

 

Are they meant to be a matched pair ? Have you checked them using CPU-Z to make sure they are matched ?

 

It maybe that the ram is to blame this time..

Yes check with cpu-z, if one has different timings compared to the other, it could cause the system to be unstable if the bios is left to deal with it its self, if your specified timings in the bios to suit the 'slower' ram you will find it more stable.

Thats just general bit of advice to those who read this, cos i think you covered that angle anyways. but its worth checking what the ram its self says is 'correct' speeds.

 

Yup, they came as a 2 channel "kit" so should be a matched pair. When it did fail I couldn't even get the system to boot yet alone be able to run CPU-Z. Even with relaxed timing (5,6,6,18 IIRC) set at ddr2 400 (200) instead of 667 (333), it didn't want to know.

I do recall running CPU-z when I intially built it, just to check everything was hunky dory and it was as it was rated. (DDR2 667 5,5,5,15 ).