Should I be worried about SPD corruption?

Last night I finished building my new gaming pc. I've never used RGB in any build, but I might have gone a little RGB overboard with this one: Vengeance RGB, H100i V2, 6x LL fans (not to leave out my motherboard and video card with RGB)!

It was a lot of fun figuring out all of the wiring and not so fun with the cable management! In the end it looks better than I expected and the RGB is awesome!

My main reason for registering and making this post is that I'm concerned about causing any damage to my Vengeance RGB RAM from SPD related issues. I downloaded Corsair Link after installing all of the hardware drivers for my build. When I opened Corsair Link it detected everything and told me my Commander Pro needed a firmware update. Once that was complete my LL fans turned ON and began to cycle through amazing colors. I'll admit I might have spent more than an hour going through all of the options and color combos...

The motherboard I'm using is the ASUS Z370-E GAMING. I'm also using an ASUS 1070 Ti video card. To control their RGB I downloaded and installed the latest version of Aura. I had an error message installing Aura (asio.sys), and then looking online I saw a lot of issues with SPD corruption.

When I did get Aura opened it only allowed my to set the RGB for my video card (it didn't see the motherboard or anything else), but I'm debating not even using Aura and just leave the video card and motherboard cycling through colors and using Corsair Link for all of the other RGB devices.

Are there any issues/risks with SPD and using Aura along with CL? or should I just uninstall Aura and not use it at all?

Could I have corrupted my RAM? I'm not sure how I would know if I did or if there is a way to know that I'm safe. I was kind of glad the Aura software didn't list anything else but my video card after searching online for the error message...

Thoughts? Comments?

I can't say anything about the SPD question ... I would think not as it's Corsair software controlling Corsair hardware you'd be OK and any damage they'd be on the hook for under warranty.

BUT ... I can comment on Aura. Look on the ROG forums ... the latest version of Aura has caused tons of issues. I've used earlier versions and they worked ... OK ... mostly. So try installing an earlier version if you want ... 1.05.22 was mostly OK for me. But the Lighting Service would sometimes lose its mind and take off with 25% of my CPU for no apparent reason. And the Aura app would crash. So I've wound up uninstalling it as all of my RGB is now in Link via Corsair stuff (I used to have strips on the motherboard.) Unfortunately, the Asus motherboard software never seems to completely uninstall and I know that there are still remnants of it around that I need to exfoliate from my system.

To add to DeBikers excellent comment. In forty years of software development, I have never seen software damage any hardware. The worst thing I have seen is software that causes the HDD to wake and spin needlessly.

To damage RAM (or any hardware for that matter), you have to short it. Over Voltage it. Pour acid on it. Hit it with a hammer. Pry on it with a screwdriver.

Last night I finished building my new gaming pc. I've never used RGB in any build, but I might have gone a little RGB overboard with this one: Vengeance RGB, H100i V2, 6x LL fans (not to leave out my motherboard and video card with RGB)!

 

It was a lot of fun figuring out all of the wiring and not so fun with the cable management! In the end it looks better than I expected and the RGB is awesome!

 

My main reason for registering and making this post is that I'm concerned about causing any damage to my Vengeance RGB RAM from SPD related issues. I downloaded Corsair Link after installing all of the hardware drivers for my build. When I opened Corsair Link it detected everything and told me my Commander Pro needed a firmware update. Once that was complete my LL fans turned ON and began to cycle through amazing colors. I'll admit I might have spent more than an hour going through all of the options and color combos...

 

The motherboard I'm using is the ASUS Z370-E GAMING. I'm also using an ASUS 1070 Ti video card. To control their RGB I downloaded and installed the latest version of Aura. I had an error message installing Aura (asio.sys), and then looking online I saw a lot of issues with SPD corruption.

 

When I did get Aura opened it only allowed my to set the RGB for my video card (it didn't see the motherboard or anything else), but I'm debating not even using Aura and just leave the video card and motherboard cycling through colors and using Corsair Link for all of the other RGB devices.

 

Are there any issues/risks with SPD and using Aura along with CL? or should I just uninstall Aura and not use it at all?

 

Could I have corrupted my RAM? I'm not sure how I would know if I did or if there is a way to know that I'm safe. I was kind of glad the Aura software didn't list anything else but my video card after searching online for the error message...

 

Thoughts? Comments?

I believe the issue you are referring to is the SPD corruption of G.Skill TridentZ RGB ram sticks. The problem was caused by a combination of G.Skill's decision to write to the SMBus to control RGB, and SMBus "talkers" when some of those applications did not conform to programming standards for Mutex to prevent concurrent SPD access.

Tools like HWiNFO, SIV, AIDA64, CPU-Z and some others are synchronized - they use a global mutex which will hold during the entire access operation and anyone else attempting to access SPD if using the same mechanism will wait for that mutex and only if it's released, will perform the operation.

Asus Aura, Corsair software, and even G.Skills own RGB application were among the offenders that did not follow this practice. The result was increasingly corrupted SPD's which created severe instability.

I can personally attest to this, as I was an early adopter of G.Skill TridentZ RGB ram and experienced the issue before it was widely known, and at the time the only solution was to use TyphoonBurner to re-write the SPD.

My understanding is that Asus Aura software has been fixed since then. If you are concerned, you can check your sticks with Typhoon Burner.

To add to DeBikers excellent comment. In forty years of software development, I have never seen software damage any hardware. The worst thing I have seen is software that causes the HDD to wake and spin needlessly.

To damage RAM (or any hardware for that matter), you have to short it. Over Voltage it. Pour acid on it. Hit it with a hammer. Pry on it with a screwdriver.

This is not correct. Celt1's post is correct. Be very careful with RGB RAM that uses the SMBUS to transmit RGB control data. Or tell your BIOS to send 1.5 volts to your CPU and then run a stress test like Prime 95. People have cooked CPUs while overclocking. The scary part is that on some of the new Z370 and X299 boards, Auto settings in BIOS are allowing potentially damaging voltages to get to the CPU. Software /firmware can and does cause hardware to fail. Check out overclock.net for many posts about this happening.

Well you did say over volting so that part is correct.