hellion Posted May 3, 2009 Posted May 3, 2009 We had an unusual thing happen today as we got the blue screen of death suddenly. We thought it corresponded to a new wireless keyboard as the computer went down upon moving touching the keyboard for cleaning. We got the "RAM Test Failure" message and determined it was the actual stick of RAM that is bad, the slot is still working. This is on our 2nd system, not the one in my signature: Mobo: Asus M3A78 CPU: Athlon 64 x2 5600 8 Gigs RAM is/was 4 sticks of Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800MhZ 2048 MB (4 2 Gig sticks) Western Digital Caviar 640GB, Vista Ultimate 64 bit etc... Installed on CPU is the MaxOrb by Thermaltake cooler The stick that failed today was the one situated very close to the cooler, not touching the pipe but about 3/4" away. The RAM stick had a white residue covering about 1/64th inch along the top edge of the heatsink on the RAMs casing/heatsink where the heatsink pipe is very close. We are assuming there is a connection with heat from the pipe of the cooler???? Just wanted to ask another noob question since I am wondering if maybe it's just a failed stick of RAM or something else before buying a different cooler that will enable us to use all four slots. Thoughts? I mean, how close is too close--we might be better off just getting a larger case... Also, we are replacing the RAM with some new OCZ Gaming Memory 2 G sticks at 1066Mhz, once we can fit them in safely... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kingfisher Posted May 3, 2009 Posted May 3, 2009 Before you bought the new wireless keyboard, was your PC working fine and if so, how long has it been "fine"? It may just be dust accumulating on the RAM's heatspreaders. Did you notice any odor or burnt smell ? I have used CPU coolers where the heatsink was even closer than 3/4 of an inch to the RAM heatspreaders. I was using a Zalman CNPS7700 and it's heatsink fins were basically on top of my first RAM stick in the motherboard. Maybe 1/16 of space between the fins of the cpu heatsink and the RAM and ran that for at least a few years without issue. There was dust accumulating on the RAM in my situation. Have you tried running Memtest86+? I really would doubt the cpu cooler would make your RAM sticks bad, especially if your PC was running fine for a while. Is your 2nd PC overclocked? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkrow21 Posted May 3, 2009 Posted May 3, 2009 Before you bought the new wireless keyboard, was your PC working fine and if so, how long has it been "fine"?It may just be dust accumulating on the RAM's heatspreaders. Did you notice any odor or burnt smell ? I have used CPU coolers where the heatsink was even closer than 3/4 of an inch to the RAM heatspreaders. I was using a Zalman CNPS7700 and it's heatsink fins were basically on top of my first RAM stick in the motherboard. Maybe 1/16 of space between the fins of the cpu heatsink and the RAM and ran that for at least a few years without issue. There was dust accumulating on the RAM in my situation. Have you tried running Memtest86+? I really would doubt the cpu cooler would make your RAM sticks bad, especially if your PC was running fine for a while. Is your 2nd PC overclocked? Just PM this guy he's pretty damn thorough. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
hellion Posted May 4, 2009 Posted May 4, 2009 Just PM this guy he's pretty damn thorough. Heh, good, I need thorough. We have no overclocked systems atm, we are in the process of still building them, and currently we are researching memory timings (what they are and really the very basics) and testing for system stability now. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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