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Memory Failure: RAM or Controller


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Hey Y'all,

So after spending my paycheck on amazon, my computer crashed... And 4 hours later i have determined that i have 2 dead sticks of RAM. Sooo needless to say my win 7 pc is next to useless with 2gbs of RAM.

I am about to buy some cheap ram, but before i do i want to know if there is a way to determine whether the issue was the ram itself or the memory controller. Only reason i ask is because this board is 4 years old, and for the first 2 it was moderately overclocked, and has been stressed all of its life.

 

And my other question is, what do y'all recomend in the DDR3 RAM department. The sticks that just died were G Skill Pi 1600 mhz. I'm not interested in overclocking at this point, just solid and bang for the buck.

 

Thanks,

Speed

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Run memtest from a cd or flash drive and see what tests it fails on. Try each DIMM  by itself and see if it passes memtest. You can look at voltages on the mem controller and looser timings to see if any of that helps.  

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Did the 2 sticks of ram die at the same time, that is very strange ?

That is the weird part, i pulled all three and ran each individually to see which sticks let the pc boot; 2 did. So i put those two in together and it booted then hung and crashed. So i went back to individual sticks and one of those two failed this time.

 

Run memtest from a cd or flash drive and see what tests it fails on. Try each DIMM  by itself and see if it passes memtest. You can look at voltages on the mem controller and looser timings to see if any of that helps.  

I have a memtest cd somewhere i will dig out but for now all i have used is the windows memtest. It passed basic and standard for 20 loops fine, but failed extended at 21% on all three together. One stick ran all the above fine(the one i'm running on), the second that ran until paired failed extended on its third pass at about the 21% mark again. And the third stick failed extended at 2%. Now i know Ms memtest aint that great but until i lay hands on my memtest cd it will have to do.

My main problem is i need access for school and work and down time will hurt my grades as most of my assignments are on my pc.

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For cheep ram,.. I would go to your nearest computer shop and get which ever value memory they buy in bulk and keep in stock with a life time warranty,.. any brand will be fine and if it fails you can exchange it quickly with out RMA or mailing it in. Good Luck hopefully it's not your controller.

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I like any module where you can easily read the part numbers off the chips and those part numbers are from the actual chip maker, as opposed from the module maker (unless the module was made by a chip maker, like Micron/Crucial or Samsung).  Sometimes you can find such modules in a local store, but generally only Crucial and Samsung brand modules are like that.

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Contact G.Skill - they have a lifetime warranty on everything don't they?

 

 

Yes they do........

 

Might not be the fastest solution, but would likely be the cheapest   :)

It would be cheapest, but probably fairly slow, and i would need to take the functioning stick out of my pc to do that as they require you to send the whole set. At your own expense too.

Thinking i'm going to order some cheap RAM and then make a fuss to G.Skill at my leisure rather than worrying about getting my pc running again in a hurry.

I'm way out of it on the RAM game so i'll need some opinons but i'm looking at picking up three of these as i have some amazon credit and a prime account.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-CT25664BA1339-240-PIN-PC3-10600-Memory/dp/B001NA25VS/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1383672877&sr=1-4

What do y'all think? I don't overclock anymore, i just need something that will run and last till i need to upgrade the whole machine in another year or two. And they have a lifetime warranty too, so some added security. I just have no clue as to the timing, latency etc implications for day to day use.

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Well the crucial sticks arrived Thursday, and this morning i took a minute to install them... Nothing! I tried each individually, no change. PC won't even boot with the one stick that was keeping me running. Safe mode works, but windows continues to hang just before the logo regardless of memory config(i tried every possible combination of the six sticks i now have).

Interestingly i slapped a live cd of linux mint(and later ubuntu) in and it too refused to boot in anything other than compatibility mode(safe mode equivalent).

So i'm rather perplexed, seems to me its a mobo issue, but i'm not really sure how to fix it. I say mobo because it must be something that slips by when minimal drivers are used, but it can't be a software issue as it also fails to boot a live cd that i can slap in another computer and run normally.

 

Any ideas? I really don't want to have to build a new pc, i am on the knife edge of broke broke.

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