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Bad RAM

S

Scifience

Member
About a week ago (last Wednesday to be exact) the parts for my new PC arrived from Newegg. Everything worked great, except one stick of my RAM was bad (Windows wouldn't install with it in, and Memtest86 found errors on it).

My RAM is Mushkin Level One PC3200.

I ordered some new RAM from Newegg (who was kind enough to let me keep the old until the new arrived so I could continue using my PC) which arrived today. Both sticks in the new dual pack are bad. Windows will start but will restart within a few seconds, and Memtest86 reports errors on both sticks.

I put the stick that worked from the first package back in, and everything seems to be fine.

The specs for my system otherwise:
Allied 500W Power Supply
Chaintech ZNF-250 Motherboard
AMD Athlon64 3200+
ATI Radeon 9800 NP
1GB of PC3200 (currently the problem)
Chieftec Matrix Case
Four 80mm Case Fans
Blue Cold Cathode Light
52x CD Burner by Artec
Sony Floppy Drive
80GB Maxtor 7200RPM Hard Drive
SoundBlaster Audigy 2

Is it normal to have this much bad RAM?

What should I do now? Return it and buy a different brand, or try the same stuff again? I thought Mushkin was supposed to be pretty good RAM.

Any advice/suggestions are appreciated. Thanks! 🙂
 
Yes, try upping your voltage or lossening timings a touch. The tRCD timming sometimes needs to be set 1 higher than default on A64 systems. On that system I would try 2-3-3-7 or 2-4-2-8 timings and 2.7v at stock speeds. Also your motherboard may be picky about where the ram is, try all the combinations of dimm slots (ie. dimms 1&2, 1&3, 2&3).

Also update your BIOS if you havent already (make sure your only useing the stable stick while doing it.
 
The BIOS is already the latest version (January - Chaintech is being slow with the BIOS updates).

I tried changing the timings around and changed the voltage to 2.7v. Windows would start up for about ten seconds and then spit out "can't read from memory at **********" and then restart a few seconds later.

Any other ideas?
 
Wow...3 sticks of bad RAM out of 4...you win the "I've been f*cked over" contest of the day!

IMO, RAM should work right out of the box and not require any tweaking to run your system the first time. Try a different brand (corsair or ocz).
 
That's sort of what I thought.

I guess I'll try some Corsair.

At least the new Bluetooth keyboard and mouse that I ordered are working great! 😉
 
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