Second stick of Crucial PC2100 dead in a week. WTH?

[Crimson]

Last week my system started crashing like crazy.. After I rebooted I noticed the memory check was returning an error. Opened up the system and put in each of my Crucial PC2100 DDR Dimms in one at a time until I found the offender. I sent that one in to Crucial to be replaced. Got that back a couple days ago, slapped it in.. everything was great... Now, today, I start having problems again.. Reboot, AGAIN with memory errors. GREAT.. so I put in the sticks one at a time again, and the OTHER old dimm I had was the one causing the problem...

What the hell could be the problem here? I am overclocking slightly (138mhz), but that shouldn't be enough to cause a problem.. I'm starting to think maybe the motherboard is bad, although the two old dimms that failed so far have been in different slots on the board..

Any ideas? I've of course tried putting all the bios settings back to where they should be, all the safest settings, etc.. My equipment is running though an APC UPS, so I don't think thats the issue.. Maybe its just bad luck, but it seems odd that two dimms fail within a week of one another with the same problem.

 

[Ionizer86]

Ya, maybe your mobo is crudded up. BTW, Crucial doesn't really approve of overclocking. It's *supposed* to void the warranty, afaik.

Maybe you should stop ocing and see what happens. 5mhz of FSB doesn't do an incredible amount to your comp. If stuff still goes wrong if you stop tweaking the fsb, your board might be the bad guy.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

look at the chips on the stick you have now and tell us the manufacturer...thank you

 

[Crimson]

Which one? The new one which is still working or the old one which just blew out? The old one says MT on it, which I assume is Micron Technologies.. IE, Crucial..

 

[RagingGuardian]

I had a stick of Crucial go bad with me last week but the new one is on the way. Seems as if they may be having problems with PC2100.

 

[Nocturnal]

i also just had a stick go bad. they sent me a new one and im fine now.

 

[Comp625]

CONSPIRACY? I THINK NOT :frown:

 

[Fandango]

I built a system for my friend and used a stick of Crucial PC2100 as well, it went bad on him too.

 

[Cosmo3]

What motherboard do you have? On many motherboards if you use more than 1 stick of memory you have to up the memory voltage. I had trouble with my Epox board and 2 sticks of memory untill I jumped up the memory 2 steps from stock voltage and all is well now. Try that first it may do the trick for you also.

 

[Crimson]

I'm using an Abit KR7A... It does have voltage adjustments.. but I haven't tried to see if they fix my problem or not.. but the new chip I have seems to work fine at the default voltage.

 

[Xenon14]

My 256mb Crucial PC2100 stick broke last month. And it broke after I played Medal of Honor a few times.... how can software damage hardware?! In any case, what stick should I get now? still go w/ crucial... how can I contact the crucial RMA???

 

[Cosmo3]

Does each stick of memory work on it's own? If it does raising the memory voltage should fix your problem. My system would lockup and get weird errors untill I raised the memory voltage and no more problems at all.

 

[Rahminator]

A crucial stick of 128MB PC2100 went bad on me over a month ago. I'm so lazy that I haven't called Crucial for RMA yet....

 

[Dreadogg]

oh I see price goes up and quality goes down gezzzzzzzzzzzz !

 

[anvalin]

Hi Crimson, hi all,

I am having exactly the same trouble Crimson describes!!! But I'm not OCing at all... :frown:

Have (or had) a pair of Crucial 256 MB PC2100 DDR CL2.5 modules on my ECS K7S5A. One stick refused working after four weeks (not booting, tested in both slots - but no other machine to test 'em). I got an exchange and this time my machine drops back from 512 to 256 MB after only two weeks. Same problem but I don't know wether it's the new or old stick that is gone.
I nearly blamed my MoBo. Who's now the evildoer here: K7S5A or bad (Crucial!) RAM?

And, btw, how did you send in your bad stick? Standard mail or UPS etc.? This game is going to be more expensive than the price of one stick...

This is my machine:

Athlon Thunderbird 1400
K7S5A (without LAN onboard)
2x Crucial 256 MB PC2100 DDR CL2.5
Enermax 350W PSU
Symbios Dual SCSI Controller
3 IBM SCSI HDDs
2 TEAC SCSI CD-ROM/R
Asus V7700 GeForce 2 GTS
Network PCI card


Many thanks for any help.