Memory overheating

[Cactusweasel]

Hi there,

I wonder if anyone would be able to throw a few ideas my way.

First of all, my system spec - everything is running at stock speeds, and standards BIOS settings etc:
P4 3.4ghz Northwood core
1gb (2x512) GeiL PC4000 (running at PC3200 speed)
Abit IC7-Max motherboard

I've been having some problems lately with gaming on my system, and I seem to have narrowed it down to the memory overheating. Bear with me while I explain.

The problems first started occuring when I installed a 3rd hard drive in one of the CD drive bays, close to the memory. My case has no ventilation at the top (only 2x80mm fans at the bottom). Games, (in particular World of Warcraft, as thats pretty much all I play), started crashing back to the desktop, with errors relating to memory. At first I didn't think twice about the heat from the hard drive, but since I have removed it, the problems are gone again. The memory gets incredibly hot on its own, so I am assuming the extra heat from the hard drive, which was also hot, pushed things a bit far and gave me the problems.

I have now aquired an additional 2gb of memory. It is PC3200 Crucial memory, without heat spreader plates like the GeiL stuff. As soon as I installed this in my system and loaded up warcraft, I instantly had problems with the sound in-game, and it eventually crashed back to the desktop with the same errors as before. When I remove the side of the case and have a fan blowing inside, both the problems went away instantly, so its definately heat related.

The things that were floating about in my head are:

1) Could there be a problem with the GeiL memory or my motherboard?
2) Perhaps theres nothing wrong with either, they just don't like each other much?
3) Maybe my case just has crappy ventilation?
4) How hot should memory normally be? Surely it shouldn't be too hot to touch, even after a good gaming session?

I am at work right now so I can't play about, but the first thing I am going to try is removing the GeiL memory, and see how it goes with just the Crucial stuff installed. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

TIA,

-
Adrian

 

[GamerExpress]

Switch to an AMD setup??

 

[Cactusweasel]

I knew something like that was coming

 

[AMCRambler]

I had one stick of Geil in my system and it was always flaky on me. I would boot the computer up and sometimes it wouldn't post. Other times not all the memory would be detected when it did post. It wasn't so much of a bother that I decided to troubleshoot it at the time. However my problems got worse. I'd been playing Battlefield 2 on my system for a couple months and it's quite the memory hog so I was probably stressing the memory. Anyway, I started having problems like yours. Game would crash to desktop, no error messages though. It got to be that it was happening every time I tried to play the game. So I decided to try pulling sticks of memory to see if that was the problem(several forums I went to had posts with people having problems with memory like this). I took the Geil stick out as it was in the last slot and the game ran fine. No problems other than being a little laggy with only 768mb of ram in the pc. I ran memtest on the stick multiple times, but every time it checked out ok, but it was definitely that stick of memory. Long story short, I ordered up a gig and a half of Kingston Value Ram from Newegg and it's running great for me again. My advice is to do the same. Try pulling one stick at a time and seeing if the game still crashes. If you track it down to one stick, then you can just replace that stick, but I don't trust Geil anymore. I would replace it all.

 

[Cactusweasel]

Considering how hot the GeiL stuff gets, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a problem with it. I used to have 1gb of Corsair memory in my system, which I swapped with a friend for the GeiL stuff, as the GeiL memory wouldn't work in his system. Funnily enough, I had a feel of the new Crucial memory, and it didn't seem to be anywhere near as hot as the GeiL, which is why i'm going to try removing it entirely.

 

[AMCRambler]

You're a good friend to trade Corsair for Geil, lol. He jacked you!

 

[Cactusweasel]

Well, hes since upgraded his own machine, so if the Geil stuff is the problem, he's getting it back!