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Bad Memory Stick?


Luckmorne

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Alright,

 

I purchased a Corair Value 512mb PC-3200 memory module from newegg back in july. From the get go I have used the system to OC (not the memory though mind you - just the processor). When I first fired everything up and tried to run the system at stock speed (200x10.0) the system would not post... had to clear the bios and try some other settings. Currently I have it running at 200x12.0. I have encountered rather random but few and far between problems with the memory being inaccessible when playing Half-Life 2 (I thought I had traced this to a known problem with Half-Life 2 and nvidia soundstorm drivers - but as of today apprently not). Situations where the computer would crash (crash here is not defined as a windows blue screen core dump but a hard non-user induced restart - just blank screen and 3 secs later BIOS checking and windows restart) were few and far between. However, today I encountered literally 10 crashes while running under load, 2 while it was just sitting there, and just now 3 in a row while it was trying to restart. I ran memtest and it found at least one error after about 3 mins (i say at least one cause as soon as I hit OK the computer crashed in the pre-described manner).

 

So basically my questions is what do I do to fix this? At this point I'm having trouble getting the system to even start and were not just talking at 200x12.0 either - ive tried 200x11.0, 200x11.5, 200x10.5 (as i mentioned before 200x10.0 wont POST), I've even tried underclocking the system and the memory.... I'm about at my wits end on what to do here.

 

Seeing as the mem module couldnt pass a memory test i am currently assuming its a bad stick and if possible I would like to request an RMA.

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  • Corsair Employees
Can you tell me our modules part# and the make and model of MB you have along with the CPU speed and it’s FSB as well? In addition, please tell me the bios settings you have set for both CPU and memory and any performance settings that you may have set?
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Sure thing.

 

Ram Part # - VS512MB400

Lot # - 0427013-0

 

Stable system parameters until yesterday were set at:

 

Clock - 200MHz

Mulitplier - 12.0

 

CPU Core Volatage - 1.625V

DDR - 2.6V

Chipset - 1.6V

AGP - 1.5V

 

Right now i have the system up and running and it seems to be doing alright at 190x12.0 and the same voltages. Only voltage I've ever changed from default is the CPU Core Volatage (I think stock is supposed to be 1.45V for the Athlon-M 2600) and as I said I've never OCed the memory... didn't think it was worth the effort as long as it could run at spec - which it isn't doing now.

 

As far as my other hardware I have an Abit NF7-S v.2 mobo, an MSI RX9800 graphics card, 2 Seagate IDE HDDs, 1 Western Digital SATA HDD, and a 4 year old Plextor CD-RW drive.

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  • Corsair Employees

Please test the modules one at a time at these settings, if you have a bad module it will fail no matter what you have the frequency set to, usually on test 4.

CPU Freq: 133 MHz

Memory Frequency: 125%

Dim Voltage to 2.7 Volts

Resulting Frequency: 166MHz

SDRAM CAS Latency: 2.5T

SDRAM RAS to CAS Delay (tRCD): 3T

SDRAM Row Precharge (tRP): 3T

SDRAM Active to Precharge Delay (tRAS): 7T

Then please use http://www.memtest.org to test them one up and lets make sure one is not failing!

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  • 1 month later...
sorry it took so long to get back. I only have the one stick in there just to avoid confusion... im only running the one 512MB module. Anyways, i ran the test awhile back and it did fail like you said it would. I've been really busy lately and haven't had the time to be without a computer that's why I hadn't responded yet. I've been underclocking the memory to run at DDR380 and it had been doing fine (only crashing every few days or so).... well today it was 5x in 3 hours. Made me remember i'd started this process already. Is there anything else you need from me before we can organize a return?
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um... i didnt say it passed. I said it failed. As in memtest said it failed the test. i dont consider it being able to run the computer for a few hours at slower then its deisgned speed to be acceptable. I bought memory to run it at DDR400.... not to run it at DDR333. If i wanted to do that i would have saved a few $$ and bought DDR333. To be explicit: the module i would like to send in for replacement failed memtest at the settings you told me to run it at. Therefore it is a bad stick and I think this warrants a replacement.
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