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Reliability through various Manufacturers

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Overkiller

Platinum Member
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.
 
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! ))

 
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! ))
Click to expand...

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?
 
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.
 
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?
Click to expand...

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 🙂
 
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.
 
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?
Click to expand...

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 🙂
Click to expand...

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