Reliability through various Manufacturers

[Overkiller]

Hello All,

First off I have built about 50+ systems in the past few years for friends and the like. Now generally I have stuck with established names such as Corsair (C2, XMS, etc) for the systems as they were always known for their quality/reliability. I have noticed a VERY high failure rate on non-overclocked sytems however across the Corsair pc3200 and pc3700 XMS lines.

After 6 months to 2 years a majority of the memory has just gone bad. Anyone else had similar experiences? Currently I have Kingston HyperX in my personal system after I went through 3 bad pc3700 sticks.

What are some other reputable memory manufacturers that you have used over the years?
Yes, they all had quality psu (Antec, Enermax, Fortron) and motherboards (abit/asus [more on this later).

This post is akin to experiences people have had. Personally I upgrade every 2 years to a high-end system and keep peripherals such as keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor intact. With this I believe many of us have become accustomed to hardware just being "old" after a year and just replacing it.

The same thing has been noticed with Abit NF7-S (I have had numerous people's motherboards unexpectadly just go bad) and to a smaller extent the Asus A7n8x.

Now my IC7-max3 from Abit is going strong 2 years now along with other iterations from those manufacturers but it appears that about 10 of those built the above 2 motherboards have failed as well.


Now some of this can be chalked to dirty power (fluctuations/surges) and the like.



Cliffnotes:

-For those that build/go through a lot of systems have you noticed any trends in failure rates?
-What should be used for future building for Ram/Mobo? DFI/OCZ?

Discuss. No flames.

 

[BlackMountainCow]

I've built around 10 systems in the last two years and I have always used TwinMOS memory. They are very tricky to get to run in the first place. It seems like their compatibility list is very short. But after I found out on what boards they run well - like the Shuttle AN35-U - I never had a single stick fail on me so far.

The good thing about the TwinMOS is that they used the BH-5 Winbond chips and that they reach some really nice timings with stock voltage. That has been a trend in the last years with brands like Corsair/GEIL/OCZ. More and more VDIMM is needed to make these RAMs run the way they're supposed to.

Right now I'm buidling a new AthlonX2 system with the Asrock 939 SATA2 board. It "only" has VDIMM settings like "low, normal" and "high." I looked into the Corsair XMS series and wanted to give them a try. But as the Abit board doesn't give an specific voltage numbers I was stuck. Then I decide to use some of my TwinMOS sticks --> worked like a charm. But I needed those sticks so gave another company a try, called TMD. I don't even know if they're sold in the US, because it's a German company/brand. They work perfectly, memtest 48 hours without an error.

Basically, I'm very satisfied with TwinMOS (either with or withou BH-5) and if they work on the board of your choice, they're quality is excellent. As I said, not a single stick dead yet.


((Except the one I rolled over with my office chair while I was looking for that stick I had just dropped! Doh! ))

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: BlackMountainCow
I've built around 10 systems in the last two years and I have always used TwinMOS memory. They are very tricky to get to run in the first place. It seems like their compatibility list is very short. But after I found out on what boards they run well - like the Shuttle AN35-U - I never had a single stick fail on me so far.

The good thing about the TwinMOS is that they used the BH-5 Winbond chips and that they reach some really nice timings with stock voltage. That has been a trend in the last years with brands like Corsair/GEIL/OCZ. More and more VDIMM is needed to make these RAMs run the way they're supposed to.

Right now I'm buidling a new AthlonX2 system with the Asrock 939 SATA2 board. It "only" has VDIMM settings like "low, normal" and "high." I looked into the Corsair XMS series and wanted to give them a try. But as the Abit board doesn't give an specific voltage numbers I was stuck. Then I decide to use some of my TwinMOS sticks --> worked like a charm. But I needed those sticks so gave another company a try, called TMD. I don't even know if they're sold in the US, because it's a German company/brand. They work perfectly, memtest 48 hours without an error.

Basically, I'm very satisfied with TwinMOS (either with or withou BH-5) and if they work on the board of your choice, they're quality is excellent. As I said, not a single stick dead yet.


((Except the one I rolled over with my office chair while I was looking for that stick I had just dropped! Doh! ))

not to try to thread hijack, but i have to ask this - how is that asrock board performing? i am assuming it is the uli chipset with agp and pci-e.. are you having the cold boot issues that the anandtech reviewer was having?

 

[Wiz]

I thought it was just me with the Twinmos memory - It runs great in my Epox 8RDA+ system but just about can't get it to run at all in other boxes.

 

[smthmlk]

Originally posted by: Overkiller
-For those that build/go through a lot of systems have you noticed any trends in failure rates?
-What should be used for future building for Ram/Mobo? DFI/OCZ?

I've built a bunch of systems with Asus motherboards (A7V, A7V133, A7V333, A7N8X-E DLX, A7N8X-MX SE, etc, all socket A boards), and have always used Crucial ram and have not had any problems with any of the systems (the a7v, a7v133 & a7v333 boards have all seen constant usage since those boards were first released & bought, so they've got many years on them, sometimes in semi-extreme conditions regarding temperature). I steered away from crucial and towards mushkin & corsair for my own systems (due to price) and things haven't been quite as rock solid, though in all fairness I can't blame any instability on ram (yet). From now on, for everything I build for myself or other, I'll go back to using Crucial's standard ram. It really has held up for me and the computers I've built for people. Just my experience

 

[Overkiller]

For future use I was going to look at OCZ/Mushkin.

I was just going by personal experience. the old A7V, A7V133 systems I built all ran solid for years and years, some still are. it just appears that Abit/Asus had a higher than normal failure rate with their Socket A [XP/Barton] motherboards.

Thanks for your comments everyone.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: smthmlk

Originally posted by: Overkiller
-For those that build/go through a lot of systems have you noticed any trends in failure rates?
-What should be used for future building for Ram/Mobo? DFI/OCZ?

I've built a bunch of systems with Asus motherboards (A7V, A7V133, A7V333, A7N8X-E DLX, A7N8X-MX SE, etc, all socket A boards), and have always used Crucial ram and have not had any problems with any of the systems (the a7v, a7v133 & a7v333 boards have all seen constant usage since those boards were first released & bought, so they've got many years on them, sometimes in semi-extreme conditions regarding temperature). I steered away from crucial and towards mushkin & corsair for my own systems (due to price) and things haven't been quite as rock solid, though in all fairness I can't blame any instability on ram (yet). From now on, for everything I build for myself or other, I'll go back to using Crucial's standard ram. It really has held up for me and the computers I've built for people. Just my experience

what do you consider extreme temps? like 140F? or 85F?