Crucial Ballistix 2x1GB PC4000 kit gone bad (merged)

[MoodyDragon]

Two months into this memory: It is giving me random crashes as well. Memtest showed only one bad zone, in a single pass... since I did not change anything, installed nothing new.. the sudden appearance of this error is a real problem. I can not get my machine to be stable on even a fresh install attempt. All settings are at 'optimized'. It worked well till now on that.....

[sniggle]

boy, this is getting to be a large number of dissatisfied customers. i just opened up my system and put a small fan from an old amd heatsink next to my ram for some active cooling. after playing fear for about an hour and then opening it up and touching the ram, there was no way i was gonna let it run with no active cooling anymore. it requires 2.8v to run properly (and 2.8v is recommended by crucial), and yet it's very hot to the touch.

[Guest philds]

Philds,

 

What bios are you using? 704-2bta seems to be the most stable with Ballistix. Are you using yellow slots or orange? Have you tried swapping sticks in the slots. 2.6v should be ok but you're probably ok up to 2.8v if you want to try that. Also Ballistix seems to NOT like tref at 3120...auto seems to be best for tref. Hope this helps but I cant help but wonder if you've set a record at 3mil + errors...

 

I changed tref to auto and its just passed the 23mins part you see in the screenshot and now at 26mins... probably to early to tell yet but this is the third time testing and the second time it error'd at 10mins.

 

The BIOS im using is the one that came with the board 23 of May 2005, I have not upgraded the BIOS at all yet but this is the latest official BIOS as I understand. But I need your opinions on if this should be RMA'd, the system is as stable as can be when in single channel with either of the sticks. Its just dual channel kills it, but it did work perfectly in dual channel for around 5 hours when I first built the machine.

[Vigilante]

More info on my issue, seems I may have 2 unmatched sticks. They can both pass memtest individually, but only barely at the rated speed and at 2t only. When they are both put in together using any combination and both using the orange and yellow slots they fail memtest. I can't even pass one run of test 5 without errors. I got this second set yesterday brand new out of the box from Newegg. I even tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, that maybe I was having problems with my memory controller or motherboard. I underclocked my cpu running it is at a 7x instead of 10x, moved my ldt down to 3x, loaded all optimized defaults, set timings to 3,4,4,8, 2t and set tref to the suggested setting from the crucial guy and to auto and they still fail in dual channel. I then put my trusty Corsair twinx PC3200 (2x512) in which are rated at 2,2,2,5 and I have them overclocked slightly to 225 FSB, and I still have them running at 2,2,2,5 1t, ran memtest for 10 hours, with my cpu back to being overclocked at 2.7 and had not one error. This lets me know it is not my motherboard or the memory controller on my CPU. It is the memory.

 

Here are my numbers on the memory, not sure what my 1st set was.

 

CL1115N.2N

56278

 

I wish they would come out and mention if there is a known problem, because it seems that people getting the memory lately are having major issues. So now I am going to have to RMA a second set of this memory again at my cost. I am not sure I would feel comfortable trying a 3rd set and risking even more shipping costs on my end just to get another bad set of memory. Does anyone know if Newegg would let me change my order or will I be stuck getting the same bad memory over and over again until I get a good set?

[Badatit]

Hello everyone,

I cant get past test #3 in dual channel with any setting that I've tried.

Tried 250FSB@up to 2.8v with 1T and 2T

3-3-3-8

3-4-4-8

3-4-4-10 all=no error free dual channel...for me

 

Kit No: BL2KIT12864Z503.000

CL115N.J3

56278

 

I ordered them from newegg 11-04-05 afternoon.

Parts arrived some days later.

I slaped them together made sure everything worked then reboxed everything for later.

I started the upgrade/build yesterday at noon. At midnight I lost the XPpro install (RAID 0) to a corrupted kernel. What a drag.

 

Flashed w/NFLD310 didnt help.

I can put either stick into slot 2, but not 2 and 4 they get an error a short way into test 3. Swap'm...same result.

 

Before the XP kernel took a dump I noticed the memory performance was about 1/3 the base in the nTune Performance utility.

While video and hard disk's were just the opposite.

However I think it only fair to say that at default settings the CMX RAM isnt much better.

 

@optomised default

CMX512-3200C2's work (2.5-3-3-8).

Patriot XBL's seem to be OK too.

Dont have time to test really, but they made serveral passes in Dual Channel without any errors.

 

I guess I'm in RMA he** too.

 

System Specs:

 

DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra-D

AMD Athlon 64 3000+

Ballistix PC4000 2x1024MBs

eVGA 7800GTX 256MB

Maxtor 40GB 133 IDE w/Win2000pro

Hatachi 80GB SATA2's stripped w/XPpro

Aspire ATX-AS520W

[Azazel]

I had a set that went bad after about 2 weeks. They would run about ddr 580 without error before they decided to crash and not let me boot back into windows. Then ruined the ram slots on my motherboard. Now I have the OCZ 2x1gb pc3200 2-3-2-5-1T set. They work flawlessly but don't oc well.

[rottendumpling]

Just built a rig (literally finished 3hrs ago) with the specs in my sig. I left it all stock to test for stability. Ran memtest on the Ballistix's and came up with an error in test 3; timings were default, everything auto - only thing I changed was the voltage to 2.8. The same test passed, much to my chagrin, with 2.6 but I didn't want to stray from manufacturer spec. Running on bios 6/23. Going to run memtest all night and see if anything else crops up.

 

Any other suggestions?

[Guest philds]

If you check Crucial's spec it says the timings for the 503 model are 3-4-4-8 2.8v. Ive run memtest overnight and in 7 and a half hours there has been 1 error in the 8th pass. Can I leave it at this or does it need to be perfect?

[toddm27]

i've also had to rma 2 sets of these as the first set failed at 250 3-4-4-8 in test 6 and now the second set I got fails in test 4 and 6 stock, with errors moving when I swap modules and when I pull one stick out it goes away but take the other out and put it back in its right back. I'm really wondering if it is just compatibility issues with the dfi nf4 boards and this memory or a whole lot of bad memory.

 

cl1115n.2n

56278 (both sets) not sure about what the first set was on the cl number

 

Hope you guys find a solution or its off to another brand as soon as these are back

[toddm27]

If you check Crucial's spec it says the timings for the 503 model are 3-4-4-8 2.8v. Ive run memtest overnight and in 7 and a half hours there has been 1 error in the 8th pass. Can I leave it at this or does it need to be perfect?

you shouldn't get any errors stock

[rottendumpling]

My fault, I didn't realise Crucial's spec was 3-4-4-8; strange thing though, I've been running 3-3-3-8 1T on memtest for the past hour with 2.6 through its veins and so far no errors but once I go back to 2.8, the error appears. I'll go back and run it stock spec and see what happens.

 

BTW, this board rocks.

[stu_allen]

Running 3-3-3-8 2.8v on a pair of 1gb sticks at 255x10 24/7 for the last couple of months with zero problems. I do have some active cooling that fires up when temps get warm though. 704-2bta bios.