Freak RAM death

[Hi-Fi Man]

Just got my desktop shipped from the U.S. and after turning it on my Asus motherboard started doing the Asus memory dance. After a few rounds it finally booted but I noticed my RAM amount was 16GiB instead my usual 32GiB. I thought to myself "aaaaw s**t!". Come to find out two of my DIMMs are bad which left me extremely bewildered as to how my RAM could break during shipping. The only thing I did to my desktop after I received it was install my heatsink and graphics card but I of course grounded myself before doing this so I have no idea how this could have happened.

Has this happened to anybody before? RAM just seemingly dying for no reason?

 

[corkyg]

There is always the possibility that the RAM in question was bad when they shipped it. Did they test it before shipping?

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

There is always the possibility that the RAM in question was bad when they shipped it. Did they test it before shipping?

It worked fine right up until I packaged it up to ship out.

 

[corkyg]

That is confusing. You packed up to ship and also received it? OK, if that is the case, I would have to suspect something enroute, i.e., a defective parcel inspection machine or something similar. Where was it shipped from and where to, and by what means?

 

[Elixer]

Things break all the time, I don't see this as odd... however, I would re-seat all the DIMMs, shipping is notorious for managing to drop objects a great distance.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

That is confusing. You packed up to ship and also received it? OK, if that is the case, I would have to suspect something enroute, i.e., a defective parcel inspection machine or something similar. Where was it shipped from and where to, and by what means?

Shipped it from New Jersey to Germany via boat container. Desktop was inside it's original box which was inside of a bigger box with a lot of paper wrap.

You think an inspection machine could fry something like RAM?

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Things break all the time, I don't see this as odd... however, I would re-seat all the DIMMs, shipping is notorious for managing to drop objects a great distance.

I reseated them a few times into different slots but no go for these two particular DIMMs.

 

[corkyg]

If it were functioning out of tolerance, it is possible. X-Rays do not pose a problem, but sometimes spurious or static electricity could if the machine malfunctioned.

 

[Elixer]

Shipped it from New Jersey to Germany via boat container. Desktop was inside it's original box which was inside of a bigger box with a lot of paper wrap.

You think an inspection machine could fry something like RAM?

Maybe Customs opened it up to have a closer look, and they caused a static charge?

 

[Torn Mind]

Maybe sea moisture cause microscopic corrosion?

Since they are dead anyway, you might as well give them a funeral with some brake cleaner or in the dishwasher, and hope for that slim chance of resurrection. lol.

 

[john3850]

Would the change in your household voltage to 220 V at 50 Hz have any effect on your output voltage.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Would the change in your household voltage to 220 V at 50 Hz have any effect on your output voltage.

Nah. PSUs are designed to handle that nowadays.

Enjoy Germany!!!

 

[disappoint]

Yeah I've had something similar happen. Took the PC on a road trip in the trunk of my car to a friends place. When I brought it back home, won't post. Bad RAM. Pulled the sticks and reseated them. That fixed the issue and it posted with both sticks working fine. My guess is the bumpy trip made a connection go bad. They didn't come out of the slot though, not even partially. They just had a bad connection somewhere. I think maybe the bumpy trip caused them to wobble back and forth allowing some dust to get in between the contacts.

 

[nerp]

Could be the chips were destined to fail and just happened to fail when they did. Could have happened on the next boot before shipping. I think it's just a freak incident and coincidence.