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RAM error?

O

orevsaara

Junior Member
I've just upgraded my machine to a Venice 3000+ on the ASRock dual sata-II 939 mobo (BIOS 1.20), and I'm having issues. The rest of the specs:

Radeon 8500 LE 128 MB AGP 4x
256x2 MB no-name PC-2100 dimms
Creative SB Audigy 2 PCI
LinkSys 10/100 NIC PCI (I put the back plate on blocking the on-board Ethernet port!!!)
Microsoft optical USB mouse
True-Touch roll-up keyboard USB
BenQ 1625 DVD+-RW PATA
Lite-On CD-RW PATA (model number does not appear in device manager...?)
Maxtor 6L040J2 (40 GB PATA)
Samsung SP0802n (80GB PATA)
FSP 300w ATX2.0 PSU
Too much info, I know, but just in case...

The computer BSOD's whenever I run the civIII map editor, though not always right away. Haven't tried Photoshop yet. I ran memtest and it found 1840 errors, but I know that in optical storage, a few errors are unavoidable, is it the same with RAM, or is it time to replace? How likely is it to be the slots? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
 
1840 errors is WAAY WAAY too many. I can run memtest for days on my 2x512 and get 0 (zero) errors (which is pretty much as it should be). See if you can RMA the memory, or else get some new stuff.
 
dag. I really don't have a spare $100 right now... I guess I'll just have to be careful until I do. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, the dimms are like three years old... I am a little concerned that there was no problem until I put them in the new mobo, though. You don't think the board might be to blame do you? Actually, I never ran memtest before that, but everything ran well enough...

thanks again!

One other thing, with this setup, am I likely to benefit noticeably from CAS 2 dimms, or should I just stick with 2.5s? Maybe I'll ask in the CPU forum, they seem to deal with RAMmy stuff there.
 
-Try upping the ram voltage to see if it is more stable (less/no errors)
-or Testing 1 stick at a time.


What speed is the ram currently running at?
 
266 MHz. As for increasing the voltage, is that really likely to make errors go away? By the way, I was just browsing the OCZ support thread over in CPUs and when they posted a link to some performance comparisons on OCZ's site, I followed it and got an instant restart, free of charge! Guess I need to do something about this sooner than I'd like...
 
Originally posted by: orevsaara
266 MHz. As for increasing the voltage, is that really likely to make errors go away? By the way, I was just browsing the OCZ support thread over in CPUs and when they posted a link to some perforamnce comparisons on OCZ's site, I followed it and got an instant restart, free of charge! Guess I need to do something about this sooner than I'd like...
Click to expand...

THE MAN is clearly out to get you.

tweekah is right though -- upping the voltage might result in more stable ram. While you should NEVER have that many errors, bad ram isn't the only thing that causes errors. Give it a shot.
 
Sounds good, but I understand that boosting the voltage can be dangerous. Obviously, if the dimms are bad anyway, who cares, but what about the slots? Could they be harmed? My only voltage boost option on this board is 2.8v. Is that safe? I'm kinda new at this.
 
Hi,

2.6-2.8(max)

Are you sure that is that 2.8v is the only choice you have?
Usually, the mobos default is about 2.5 or 2.6, with the option to up the voltages in 0.5 segments.

Check again, before you go straight to 2.8, just in case - especially if it is old RAM - careful
 
I'm just going with what others have said about this board, but it seems to only have two voltage settings, high and low. Based on the Newegg specs, it seems that the "high" is 2.8v. The quick and dirty OC thread suggests that I should be safe below 2.9, I have no clue whatever what kind of dimms they are or who made them, except the speed and capacity, so... my only worry now is that the dimms might be ok, while the slots are not. I'm sure I could find this elsewhere, but is the voltage something that I could easily adjust in the BIOS, or do I need to do something more exotic?
 
Try the voltage first for the RAM before investigating more 'exotic' paths.
This is only a troubleshooting measure, so, don't expect it to be 100% fix.
It may be the prob, or it may not!!!!!

Could try memtest for minimum of 12 hours each stick at each voltage and note down the results. It would be interesting to see if there is a difference even if errors are thrown up.
 
Well, the voltage bump seems to have fixed things for now. I tried the dimms in the other two slots and memtest crashed, so then I bumped the voltage, and VOILA! Error-free!!! So while I know I'll have to get new RAM in a few months or so, I can wait til I have the $$. Thanks one and all for your assistance, you saved me some serious trouble.
 
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