New Build cant pass Memtest#5 or Prime

[Midion]

Hello all,

I ran Memtest last night and awoke to it failing, so i ran it again one stick at a time, and all sticks were good. Then after checking the manufacturers specs for the voltages (RAM @ 2.05V and NB 1.4V) ran again....failed Memtest #5 again. Timings are 5-5-5-15-2T per the manufacturers specs also.

Also was not able to run more than 10mins of Prime..... any suggestions?

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Are you overclocking your CPU at all?

 

[taltamir]

you cant run prime because you have ram errors. you can tell you have erros because you fail memtest. you fail memtest because you OC your memory, northbridge, or CPU too much (the CPU OC can overheat the northbridge causing it to error when communicating with the memroy, but is highly unlikely).

If you are within the manufacturer's specifications then either the memory or your motherboard are defective, or they are incompatible with each other (rare).

be advises that all memory specifications are for over clocking it and assume over volting (DDR-800 ram requires you to overvolt to 1.9 to 2.1v in order to operate in the timing advertised, etc), it is basically a guaranteed overclock with that memory, if it does not reach that guaranteed overclock then it is faulty.

 

[Midion]

@taltamir : That all makes sense.... I'll try lowering the voltages on the RAM and the NB and see if its stable. What is weird is that i ran Memtest#5 again today after reflashing the BIOS (all settings on RAM and NB set to manufac specs) and passed the first pass, but then let it run for another pass and it failed. I'll keep digging....

 

[taltamir]

its not weird at all... one pass does not gaurentee stability. Its all a question of how often, ideally you will never have errors, but most people can live with one error a year... or a few more then that... if you have 1 error per pass, and a pass takes an hour (but simulates the work of several hours to a day i think, depending on what work you do), then that means this is how stable it is... that is... it is stable enough to "only" error once a day, or once an hour, or once every two days, and so on...

I would run it overnight, get at least 8 hours AND 5 passes (with 0 errors before i consider it stable (id prefer to do more, but who has the time).

also, you might want to lower the speed in mhz or to RAISE the timing instead of lowering the voltage. increasing the voltage makes it more stable, but makes it run hotter which can make it fail (break) or error or just degrade slowly over time... and waste more electricity too... if it is erroring in the settings it lists (speicifc voltage + timing + mhz speed like DDR-800 means 800 mhz) then you really should replace it. RMA it as defective.