Bad memory stick - what to do?

[Moosehuffer]

About 8-9 months ago, I bought some of this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148212

About a month ago I started getting sporadic blue-screens on windows 7, and one of the memory sticks has been causing these errors. After removing it and running on just 2gig memory, things have been stable.

Of course, I'd like to go back to 4 gigs - what I'm wondering is, can I buy just *any* random stick of memory and mix + match? Or do the different memory sticks nowadays generally need to be of the same name/brand/specifications? Just trying to save a few $$'s.

Thanks!

 

[numark]

Why not just get an RMA and send it back to Crucial? The Ballistix line has a lifetime warranty, so all you have to do is go to their site and submit a warranty request, and once they receive and test the memory, they'll send you a new one. I've already done this once before with a Ballistix Tracer module, and everything was incredibly easy.

 

[lxskllr]

Why not just get an RMA and send it back to Crucial? The Ballistix line has a lifetime warranty, so all you have to do is go to their site and submit a warranty request, and once they receive and test the memory, they'll send you a new one. I've already done this once before with a Ballistix Tracer module, and everything was incredibly easy.

Of course you're stuck getting Crucial's garbage ram back :^D

Rmaing is probably cheapest, but you may end up with the same problems down the road. I've had good luck mixing ram, but ideally your ram will match. Personally, I'd take a chance on mixing ram than buying more Crucial sticks.

It's you call. You've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

 

[dsmitty308]

You said it all, "Just trying to save a few $$'s." That would mean you need to RMA it. All it would cost is postage to send it to Crucial. In 10 years, I have only had 1 stick of Crucial RAM go bad and I sent it to them and had the replacement in no time. Their customer service is very good.

You have nothing to lose going that way.

Smitty

 

[Blain]

"Manufacturer Warranty
Parts: Lifetime limited"

RMA the memory back to Crucial. It's the only way that companies will learn.

 

[fffblackmage]

RMA.

I have a set of the 2.2V 2x1GB DDR2-800 Ballistix. They haven't died, but might be because I haven't been running them at the rated 2.2V.

 

[fastcuda]

RMA.

I have a set of the 2.2V 2x1GB DDR2-800 Ballistix. They haven't died, but might be because I haven't been running them at the rated 2.2V.

Wow, never thought of undervolting them, I had 2 sets (4x1g)of the 1g modules die twice and then they said I could trade them for 2g modules, those are only 2v and work so far....

 

[lxskllr]

Wow, never thought of undervolting them, I had 2 sets (4x1g)of the 1g modules die twice and then they said I could trade them for 2g modules, those are only 2v and work so far....

I don't think it makes a difference. All my dead Crucial sticks were under clocked, and under volted. I'd start to have problems, and boost the voltage by .005-0.1V, and it would temporarily fix it. They'd go down again, and I'd bump the voltage again. I think I could do that twice before they were over volted, and wouldn't work at all.

 

[weeber]

I don't think it makes a difference. All my dead Crucial sticks were under clocked, and under volted. I'd start to have problems, and boost the voltage by .005-0.1V, and it would temporarily fix it. They'd go down again, and I'd bump the voltage again. I think I could do that twice before they were over volted, and wouldn't work at all.

I hate these Crucial Ballistix sticks. I've had to return 2 sets of the 2GB DDR2-800 in the past 1.5 years because they've gone tits up. I just got the 3rd pair back from RMA. It'll be interesting to see how long these last. Never overclocked, just run at stock settings.