*RIP, my mushkin* i want to cry.....

[Guest Daishi]

for no particular reason, my beloved mushkin PC 3500 High Performance Level II dual pack 1024 MB (2x512) chose today to die on me.

 

one module seems to be totally fine, but the other is toast.

 

i was never able to hit high overclocks with that set, or my sister's, but i loved it's VERY tight timings.

 

i will miss it greatly, and am writing this little post as a small memorial to it.

 

i will see what i can get in exchange, but they just don't make them like these ones any more.

[ridikolous]

how did it die?

[Tony420]

Ram dont just die all a sudden...you either A.) Broke it, or B.) It was slowly degrading itself and crashing you A LOT in the process.

[Guest Daishi]

ridikolous:

it produced an error during my routine prime checkup. i followed up with memtest, and that particular address on that module produced an error in memtest tests 2, 3, 4 and i did not bother to go farther. added volts and lower clocks resulted in no change of error location or frequency.

 

tony:

i have never even been able to hit spec with this pair, and i have kept myself below rated voltage. i have tried OCing it in the past, but today it just failed while priming and running a download running 200 MHz, 11-2-2-2-2-13-15 @ 27 volts. follow up with memtest isolated an error at one address on one module, every test, with changed ram slot, cleared CMOS re-flashed bios and a few othe things that i cannot think of at the moment.

 

i have not made any hardware changes in the last while, and have tested the module in a friend's machine with a failure at the same address.

 

and, even though it failed out of memtest, it lasted over an hour, and did so again while i was testing this evening.

 

so far as i am concerned it DID just die.

[Guest Psychosis]

Ya know what Daishi? This could actually be a good thing. The ram felt sorry for you since it couldn't help you overclock much so it took it's own life. Now that it is gone you are gonna need another 1gig set to replace it. I would take this as an opportunity to purchase some of the well known TCCD memory for your system. They OC very good, and scale nicely. BTW, you can make a cool keychain with that stick of memory anyway.

[Guest Daishi]

psychosis:

 

hahahaha.

 

this is mushkin, smart guy. it is still under full warrenty, and i have done nothing to void the warrenty.

 

the stuff cost me an arm and a leg when i got it a year ago, and there is no way that i am writing that expense off now that i am a student again.

 

i hope to be using my mushkin dual channel well into my athalon 64 days.

[wickedld9]

You probably already knew this but....The memory that you have is no longer offered at Mushkin. The company that made the IC's on your memory are no longer making memory IC's so Muskin may not have stock to directly replace what you have lost. You may end up getting the PC 3200 Level 2 V2 for your warranty replacement.

I would test the memory in another computer just to be certain that it has failed.

[Guest Daishi]

mentioned it earlier, but i did run memtest on it using a friend's nf7-s and had errors at the same address.

 

and i know damn well that mushkin no longer has high perf level II 3500. i will see when i speak to the tech, but they DO still have hi perf level I version 1 3500 for sale. timings are not as tight, but it might let me overclock better than the version 2 stuff whenever i upgrade my board. (hopefully this summer)

[tobias]

this post is hilarious. you dont even run spec on the ram. you held on to and used ram that wouldnt even run at advertised speeds? and the funniest part, you wanted this crap to go with you well into your "athlon 64 days"? add more volts, loosen timings and finally see how high she will go

[Guest Daishi]

hey tobias:

 

believe me, i have tried to get this system to OC on the FSB. one thing that i am pretty sure of is that it is not the ram that was holding me back, until it died, since feeding it more volts and loostening the timings did not help me to hit higher FSB with satisfactory stability. i think that it is far more likely that i happened to get a bad motherboard for OCing, since i need 1.9 chipset voltage to even get it stable at 200 FSB, and the ram is just fine with 2.7 volts.

 

going to 2-3-3-11 didn't help. turning CPC off didn't help. there are plenty of people who get a decent overclock with CPC on and tight timings, and yet with them on or off, regardless of multi i could not get it prime stable upping the FSB past 200. i could make memtest run okay up to about 230 with a 8 x multi, with CPC off and more relaxed timings, but not prime and not my games.

 

also, i DO oc to the degree that i am able, and when i don't mind cranking up my fans i rum my CPU up to REAL 2600, with 13 x 200.

 

the soldering on my particular board looks like it was done by a well motivated monkey, and there is a SM component that is bridging one of the pins of one of my ram supply mosfets to ground. i called DFI about it, and they thought that it was supposed to be there. maybe everyone's boards are like this, but i am definately NOT impressed by the manufacturing quality of it, in spite of the wicked overclocks that some other people have managed to pull off.

[tobias]

have you tried to oc or at least run spec on your buddys board, just to make sure? and run memtest at spec and see if you get errors. what im trying to say is that the ram never worked right and was always broke if it didnt even run at spec, but testing on a friends board will verify if it was mobo or ram. i see you said your sisters ram didnt work right either? i understand it was expensive, but if its broke, its broke. it would be a much faster system with some relaxed timings runnin at 240 - 250 fsb. can you rma the mobo? monkeys and mobos dont mix lol.

[Guest Daishi]

tobias:

 

the module in question at the moment is definately DEAD. at spec above it and below it.

 

regarding the memory being defunct from the start, though: i was able to run it at spec in my friend's NF7-S when i was initially trying to find out was limiting my OC. same deal with my sister's memory.

 

no, i absolutely cannot RMA the mobo. i wold have liked to have done so when i first took it out of the box and saw what the soldering was like, however at that time i had to make the decision to either wait about 2.5 months to get a new board back from DFI, or go ahead and waterproof the board to try and OC it. i established that it actually worked, and then put the conformal coating on it. from that point on, i have been stuck with the thing.