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Ram going bad after some time?

K

knutp

Senior member
In my old system (currently my mothers) I had one 64 mb sdram chip. 32 chips. I bought it together with my k6-233 (3,5 year ago or something like that). The whole system have been working great most of the time. But when I started that computer 3 days ago the bios told me that it had done a bad bios check. Then I turned down the timings and booted up again. that worked good for one day. The next day when I started that system it gave me a bluescreen immidiatly after starting windows. I put in my 128 mb apacer memory and tried with that. Interessting enough it found all the ram (tx chipset). and I came right into windows.

I have never seen memory go bad after a few years of "perfect health", and I see many memory moduls with 10 or lifetime warranty (the 3 sticks I got now has lifetime warranty, and im starting to think that it is kind of nice to have).

Is it usual for ram to go bad after a few years, or does most last longer than the other components in the computer (not considering moving parts as hd, fans, ps, cd'rom etc)?
 
knutp, it's not usual for RAM to go toes up, but it's also not unheard of. I recently had a stick of 128MB PC133 SDRAM die on me. I had two sticks in an Abit BH6 and one morning the system refused to boot. Turns out one of the two sticks were bad. A swap at the VAR w/ a good one got it back up and running.

Fans, hard drives, and other things mechanical typically will exhibit higher failure rates than RAM.
 
Yup.. its not unheard of, but it certainly isn't common.
I've got fully functional EDO sticks that are quiet old.. (10 years maybe?)
 
The most common reason for memory modules to seem to go bad after time is poor connections, especially when the socket and module use different metals and the tin corrodes from this. Reseating the modules usually solves the problem for a long time.

Once in a great while a chip is damaged because of a voltage spike from another chip. The numerous filter capacitors are supposed to prevent this, but they sometimes go bad (lose water - also why it's recommended that smoke detectors be replaced every 10 years).
 
I think its kind of strange after 3.5 years though. I have tried bad ram before, but that was new sticks that woulnd't work right.

I can believe in the corrosion thing. I tried reseating the memory but that didn't do more good. And the ram socket still works.

And is it usual for the 430tx chipset to detect 128 mb dimms? It's supposed to cache 64 mb ram. but it works ok with 128 now... but im going back to 64 soon...
 
You're right! TX chipset will only cache 64MB but that does not mean it cannot detect RAMs above 64Mb. The catch is that above 64Mb the system does not get any faster unlike other chipsets.😎
 
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