Crucial's Response to Problems with Ballistix Memory

[Midnight Rambler]

A bit of background first - I'm building my self a new system around an E8400. Already had most of the parts lying around other than the CPU and mobo, including 4 GBs of "extra sweet" Ballistix PC2-8500 that I had accumulated (ie. handpicked from several batches I had been through and tested extensively). I wanted a new, fairly high-end mobo and was waiting for an X48 board, but now with the delay (again), I decided X38 would do. And despite reading about some other users (here and elsewhere) having problems with Asus boards and Ballistix, I was fairly convinced they were just being bitten by the old issue where the BIOS voltage was initially set too low (ie. 1.8) for the Ballistix, which generally like higher voltages. Thus I bought an Asus Maximus Formula - sweet board and found a great price, $20 cheaper than NE to boot ! I wasn't worried because I knew how to handle the "problem", plus most of my "sweet" Ballistix modules would run at 2.0 anyways (vs. 2.2 spec), sometimes boot even lower.

Welp, "it" bit me. So I called a friend who works for Micron to get me hooked up with a really good tech, vs. calling in cold to their Crucial support center. Detailed the problem to him and he acknowledged there are large numbers of mobos out there having issues with Ballistix (but not std. Crucial) memory. He also noted that it is very "hit & miss", not just among companies, but also among models, and that even two of the exact same boards may not work comparably, or at all, with Ballistix. Further, he said it was their opinion, at this point, that the problem "lay at the board level with the manufacturers". Not exactly surprising ... could be Crucial covering their butts, OR, could be that in truth, quality of design and manufacturing ain't what it used to be. I'm leaning towards the latter theory, esp. considering my Ballistix are all older rev, before they cheapened them (slightly) for the blowout pricing and rebates they have been going through lately.

In finishing our conversation, I asked what board/brand I should buy in order to be able to use my Ballistix without problem. I offered up several other models by Asus, DFI, and Gigabyte that I had been looking at, but he nixed them ALL ! Told me the only boards he could recommend right now for use with Ballistix were those by MSI. Said Asus and Gigabyte were on par when it comes to the problem, and that I should totally avoid DFI these days. Yikes !

Now if this had been a cold call to Crucial TS and I had gotten any old flunky, I could imagine the above scenario, but considering this guy is supposed to be a top level tech there, per my friend, I don't know what the heck to think.

Any suggestions/comments ?

MR

1. Thread moved from Motherboard Forum
   AnandTech Moderator lopri

 

[Miramonti]

Ballistix 8500 became a problem for me, which led to an RMA recently.

A few fridays ago, I completely powered down my computer and couldn't boot back up. I had been using an abit ip35 pro and ballistix 8500 since July. Suspecting it was the motherboard, but not having a spare to test, nor spare ddr2 memory to test (this was my first intel 775/ddr2 rig), I drove to Frys and bought 2 new motherboards and some extra ddr2.

Fortunately I threw in the extra ddr2, because it was the Ballistix 8500 that had gone bad after months of being up w/o powering down completely. It simply could no longer cold boot either motherboard, with either 8500 stick. I tested it with my original abit board, as well as the two new ones, a gigabyte ds3l, and an asus p5k-e.

I had problems from the outset with this memory but thought it was the abit ip35 board. From a cold boot, I always had to start with one stick, and then increase from there. As of a couple months ago, I hadn't been able to add the 4th stick tho. It became more and more flaky over time, until neither stick could cold boot anymore. It wasn't a big issue previously tho, since I rarely completely cold booted from an unplugged psu, and could get by with only 3gb.

I live-chatted with Crucial this week, and he quickly setup an rma for my 4gb (4x1gb), which I sent in this week. I told him my story and he thought it was the memory, asked for the batch numbers, and that was that.

I'm expecting new sticks back, altho hope they are more reliable than the batch I had. Truth is I didn't need 8500 over 6400 anyways, and altho I overclocked my rig, I did it with the cpu multiplier and not the fsb.

 

[Thor86]

This is nothing new, Micron memory for ocing are the worst for long-term durability.

That's why I never buy Micron based memory ever again.

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: Thor86
This is nothing new, Micron memory for ocing are the worst for long-term durability.

That's why I never buy Micron based memory ever again.

So in other words your going to avoid just about every memory manufacture then right? cause about 75% of them use micron IC's.

They actually last quite a while too if you bother to play with the voltages until their stable (eg. 1.8v and working your way up) and if you have to use 2.2v you want to have active cooling on them.

 

[brencat]

Originally posted by: Quiksilver
So in other words your going to avoid just about every memory manufacture then right? cause about 75% of them use micron IC's.

They actually last quite a while too if you bother to play with the voltages until their stable (eg. 1.8v and working your way up) and if you have to use 2.2v you want to have active cooling on them.

:thumbsup: Agreed. I think the trick with any brand is to not use any more vDIMM than absolutely necessary, despite what the rated voltage is.

 

[Deinonych]

Interesting. I just had a pair of Ballistix sticks go out about a month ago, along with my P5N32-E SLI Plus motherboard. I had suspected the motherboard was the culprit all along, but now I wonder.

 

[Midnight Rambler]

So in other words your going to avoid just about every memory manufacture then right? cause about 75% of them use micron IC's.

They actually last quite a while too if you bother to play with the voltages until their stable (eg. 1.8v and working your way up) and if you have to use 2.2v you want to have active cooling on them.

Precisely. Micron is probably still one of the better/best IC's out there, esp. their D9's. A lot of newbies talking trash about Micron/Crucial/Ballistix fail to realize their own sticks which they're praising actually have Micron IC's on them. In fact, I know of few brands of high quality, high performamce DDR-2 that do not use the Micron D9 IC. A quick look here might help.

Back to the original problem about which I posted. I'm finding other users, with other brands of high performance memory (based on D9's BTW) are having problems too with their X38 boards. What is really baffling me though is that it seems "hit & miss" as I stated earlier. Some have speculated that BIOS issues are at play, considering they never had issues with their mobo until they flashed to a new/different BIOS. I know one thing, it's NOT memory voltages, as like I said, I have several sweet sticks that will run easily at lower than specified voltages, and none of them work. I'm leaning towards it being an issue where mobo build quality has not caught up with the requirements of current cutting-edge design.

And the only board Crucial recommends at this point, from MSI, does not impress me. And that's not even taking in to consideration the pink DIMM slots or the fact that they color-keyed them wrong for dual channel use. Ouch ...

 

[Miramonti]

With problems I had with my ballistix, I got to give credit to their RMA process. I live-chatted with them, got an rma number, and received 4 new 8500 sticks 3 or 4 days after they received mine. I thought this would atleast take weeks. :thumbsup: Now lets see how long abit takes when they receive my motherboard...

 

[idiotekniQues]

hehe i remember a year ago when i built the rig in my sig everyone was goin nuts for most any micron ram

i was kinda ticked off my ocz plat. rev. 2 wasnt micron but all in all it has done me just fine.

 

[Thorsson]

My previous Ballistix (DDR not DDR2) got nixed. It turned out that the motherboard (an ASUS) was overvolting the RAM by 8%. I wonder if similar problems with voltage regulation are causing the problems?

 

[Gillbot]

Don't forget along with using as little voltage as possible there should be active cooling for all Micron D9's. Mine have survived for quite a while now but I actively cool mine with 50MM fans positioned right above the sticks.

 

[chuckm]

Anyone tried the DDR2 800 2X2 Ballistix yet?

 

[mrfatboy]

I'm on my 3rd pair of Ballastix now since last August. See rig below. They seem to last 3-4 months. They are 24/7 OC to 950 at 2.24v. Crucial RMA's no problem but it is interesting to see they don't last long at that speed.

my friend has same rig and he is only OC'd to 3.2 (800 on mem). I think is vdimm is 1.8v. He is still running the same 4 gigs since August.

 

[DerwenArtos12]

This sounds more like an issue with crucial than with the motherboard manufacturers here. ASUS, Abit, Gigabyte and DFI are essentially the top 4 motherboard makers IMHO so having to rule them out for the sake of ram seems silly to me. I won't buy another MSI. I'll buy intel branded boards before MSI and call stock speeds good enough.

 

[BigMoosey74]

GIGAByte's last bios update was in the end of Feb and it says that it enhances memory performance. I am curious if it indeed rests on the board makers shoulders and if these bios updates help at all.

 

[SEAL62505]

I haven't even been OC'ing my ballistix lately and I still burn through them like crazy... Their RMA process is good stuff... but very bizarre that they last me less than 6 months.

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: RuffRyder1672
I haven't even been OC'ing my ballistix lately and I still burn through them like crazy... Their RMA process is good stuff... but very bizarre that they last me less than 6 months.

a) What models?
b) What voltage?
c) If running them at 2.2v do you have active RAM cooling setup?
d) Did you know they don't need to be ram at 2.2v, but rather start at 1.8v and work your way up until their 100% stable.
e) Crucial more or less lists 2.2v as the maximum recommended voltage, not what they should be run at.
f) Lower voltage needed = longer lasting ram due to less heat and stress.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Midnight Rambler

So in other words your going to avoid just about every memory manufacture then right? cause about 75% of them use micron IC's.

They actually last quite a while too if you bother to play with the voltages until their stable (eg. 1.8v and working your way up) and if you have to use 2.2v you want to have active cooling on them.

Precisely. Micron is probably still one of the better/best IC's out there, esp. their D9's. A lot of newbies talking trash about Micron/Crucial/Ballistix fail to realize their own sticks which they're praising actually have Micron IC's on them. In fact, I know of few brands of high quality, high performamce DDR-2 that do not use the Micron D9 IC. A quick look here might help.

Back to the original problem about which I posted. I'm finding other users, with other brands of high performance memory (based on D9's BTW) are having problems too with their X38 boards. What is really baffling me though is that it seems "hit & miss" as I stated earlier. Some have speculated that BIOS issues are at play, considering they never had issues with their mobo until they flashed to a new/different BIOS. I know one thing, it's NOT memory voltages, as like I said, I have several sweet sticks that will run easily at lower than specified voltages, and none of them work. I'm leaning towards it being an issue where mobo build quality has not caught up with the requirements of current cutting-edge design.

And the only board Crucial recommends at this point, from MSI, does not impress me. And that's not even taking in to consideration the pink DIMM slots or the fact that they color-keyed them wrong for dual channel use. Ouch ...

interesting, I just flashed my bios on my ip35 pro to one of those beta bioses (x3350 on the way) and I"m getting a C1 error (mem detect). I think I'll throw in my single stick xps stick to see if it's the crucial...

edit: nope, the extra stick (actually an old kingston hyper-x ddr2 800 stick) gets the same problem. I guess that's a good news/bad news scenario...

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: chuckm
Anyone tried the DDR2 800 2X2 Ballistix yet?

Work perfectly fine for me at 2.013V and 667MHz with the G.Skill HZ's, in a 6GB configuration.

But I just got them last Tuesday...

 

[dclayw]

Well, I did know about all the problems with Crucial Ballistix memory but thought I'd give it a go anyway. I have the 2x1GB PC2-8500 tracers with Gigabyte EX38-DS4 mobo, new build. It posts but no response at all from keyboard input, so I cannot get into the BIOS. I booted with a couple of old 512MB sticks I had laying around and it booted no problems. Got into the BIOS and increased DDR2 voltage by +0.4 to bring it up to 2.2v. Then powered down, put the tracers back in and still no go, just sits at the Gigabyte logo screen and won't accept any keyboard input, it does post though (single short beep). What is it with this memory on these boards?

I put the tracers in an old Dimension E510 and ran 2 round of memtest86 with no errors (about an hour all up) so the memory seems fine.

Anyone have any suggestions where I can go from here. There must be someone out there who has this board with this memory.

 

[chizow]

I think its a combination of things, but mostly due to the Micron D9s that run at 2.1-2.2V default voltage. Probably a combination of sustained high temperatures and poor PWM circuitry and voltage fluctuations on lower-end boards, particularly when overclocking leads to the early death of D9 based chips. I've had 3 of these kits die on me, not all Ballistix, one was Buffalo all on a P5N-E SLI. So no this news doesn't surprise me at all as I've kinda felt this was the case since about August.

I'm not going to write-off Crucial because of this problem, I just won't buy any more D9-based DDR2 (I probably won't need more anyways). If anything this experience has taught me to look to Crucial first as they have a great RMA service in the event you do have a RAM problem.

 

[Andrew1990]

Sorry for not reading all the replys, but what should I do with my ram? I just got it and installed it yesterday and all seemed fine until about an hour ago and it is now having problems and getting memory errors in games. Will Crucial send me the old double sided sticks if I RMA them?

1024mbx2 PC6400 DDR2 Dual Channel Ram
Batch # 97432

 

[lxskllr]

Very interesting... Here's a copy/paste of a question I had posted in General Hardware. I replaced the mb with the same issues, and I have new ram on the way to try out. Do you all think this is the same problem you've had? The ram has never been overclocked, or overvolted. It would actually be great if it turned out to be a ram issue. My new ram is a 2*2gb set of Patriot, and I've been afraid it was my mb killing the ram.


I got home from work today to find my computer fans running, but no display on the monitor. I restarted the computer, but the display never appeared. Thinking it was my gfx card I put my 7900gs in to test. That's when I noticed my Crucial Tracer ram wasn't lighting up. I'll list the things I've tried below, and I would appreciate any comments of things I might have missed.

Swapped my 8800gt with the 7900gs and back again

Tried every combination of ram, in all of the slots. This one is a little strange. I have 2 sticks of Ballistixs, and 2 sticks of Tracers. I can't see anything with the Ballistix of course, but the Tracers will shine the blue lights on the mb but the ram activity lights won't show unless I press the reset button a time or 2. They'll then come on, but they won't flash(little to no activity). I've had a few issues the last couple of months where I would have the problems I've listed above, but would eventually get the computer to POST. I would then bump my vdimm up by .1V, and that would fix it for a short while. I started out at 1.9V(undervolted), and my last setting was 2.2V(per spec)

Swapped out my psu, and used minimal components to try POSTing

Removed all of my ram, and got a bunch of beep errors

I think that's it. Is there anything I missed? I'm thinking it's the mb, and I have that Abit from Hot Deals ordered and on the way. I really didn't want to spend the money right now, and that board isn't my first choice, but it's hard to beat the price.

All of my specs are shown in my sig except for the monitor which is a Dell 2407fpw

 

[spinejam]

FYI: I've had four 2x1Gb Ballistix kits (all batch 97432) crap-out on me ranging from boot errors and bsod's to corrupting my HD. Some modules were overclocked (1000mhz) and others were @ stock speed (800mhz) -- but all were @ 2.2Vdimm. Initial return to newegg and they sent me another 97432 batch! Now all RMAs sent to crucial!

 

[jmmtn4aj]

I remember when I first got my P35-T2R from DFI the damn think wouldn't boot with a C1 error, the same memory that worked fine with a P35-DS3L. So I popped it back into the DS3L and took the two sticks that were already there and put them into the T2R, booted up. A month or so later it wouldn't boot, swapped em out with the DS3L again (4gigs in the DS3L), memory would boot in the DS3L, new memory would boot in the T2R.. then a few months later that wouldn't boot too. So I took the last two sticks and stuck them into the T2R. By now of 6 sticks, 2 wouldn't work in the T2R but would work in the DS3L, 2 would work in the T2R, and the other two just plain didn't work. Then the ones in the T2R failed again, this time for real, wouldn't boot on the DS3L too. Had to send four sticks for warranty service while I use the last two in my T2R. Roar.

PS: It'salways been stock volts at 800-900Mhz, with the rare 1000Mhz. I suppose I should invest in that ram cooler sometime soon..