geekhack
geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: keyb_gr on Fri, 15 April 2011, 11:07:18
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OK, so my old folks were complaining that Seamonkey would randomly crash hard on the computer downstairs. Well, Memtest86+ found the reason within seconds, one of the two 512 meg sticks was producing errors, and some swapping around allowed identifying the culprit.
The system is a Dell Precision 380 workstation, 955X chipset, 3 GHz Prescott, way oversized Quadro FX3400. (This was bought used when the old system's mo/bo went south. Compared to the old piece of crap case, truly a joy to work on, even if it's a BTX oddball. That graphics card is kinda noisy though, even with some RivaTuner taming.) Takes DDR2 SDRAM, dual channel with 4 slots in total. Chris Hare's list says the chipset can take up to 1 GBit per chip (so that would mean minimum 2x 8 chips for a 2 gig module). The old modules are Samsung jobs, PC2-4200U-444-10.
So what's a reliable memory manufacturer these days? (Kingston? Mushkin? Corsair? PNY? Anything else?)
I'd like to have two 1 or 2 gig sticks, should be plenty in any case (the box runs Win2k and nothing too dramatic in terms of software).
Pricing shouldn't be too far out of the ordinary (Dell is offering a memory kit for an affordable 191€, cheap eh?), but most of all I want the things to Just Work[tm] for as long as possible. So who's got correct SPD data and good soldering quality?
Side note: Turns out my ISP shut down their newsserver two weeks ago. Carp. Gotta look for a replacement... even if Usenet is mostly dead these days.
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Don't know if there is much difference, or how many years you going to run that?
Anything with decent warranty(5 years or life-long)?
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Dell sucks and uses cheap crap.
Kingston, OCZ, samsung, etc all seem to be reliable RAM.
I've never had any that died before... it's pretty hard stuff to break. Perhaps the cheapo dell mobo was sending incorrect voltages or something (could also be due to bad caps as dell is notorious for that).
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Dell sucks and uses cheap crap.
Kingston, OCZ, samsung, etc all seem to be reliable RAM.
I've never had any that died before... it's pretty hard stuff to break. Perhaps the cheapo dell mobo was sending incorrect voltages or something (could also be due to bad caps as dell is notorious for that).
Yeah, memories like other microchips should last long time if there isn't any issues like wrong voltages or extreme heat...
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That's what I used to think, too.
This Samsung DDR2 stick disagrees (of course I don't know its entire history, but these Dell systems seem pretty well-vented). Last year I also lost a 256 meg Infineon PC133 CL3 SDRAM stick, the BX compatible variety at that... 1 bit error, IIRC. (And those used to be some of the best you could buy.) There the system had gotten rather warm at some point, as I was running it with passive cooling at the time, but still...
Looks like memory modules do fail once in a while. I guess you'd have to use pretty large amounts of them to see any statistically relevant numbers though.
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memoryx.com (http://www.memoryx.net/) is a RAM broker and they're down the street from me. They've never sent me a bad memory module.
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I just got a 4Gb set of GSkill for the parents' box. 65USD, seemed stable enough
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I had DOA DDR2 Kingstons, and Super T with faulty bit.
Corsair with heat spreaders work fine so far.
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I've run through the entire history of G-Skill for the last 6 years.
My tech friend has built probably 80 PC's with them. Reliable or Better!
NO failures!
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That's what I used to think, too.
This Samsung DDR2 stick disagrees (of course I don't know its entire history, but these Dell systems seem pretty well-vented). Last year I also lost a 256 meg Infineon PC133 CL3 SDRAM stick, the BX compatible variety at that... 1 bit error, IIRC. (And those used to be some of the best you could buy.) There the system had gotten rather warm at some point, as I was running it with passive cooling at the time, but still...
Looks like memory modules do fail once in a while. I guess you'd have to use pretty large amounts of them to see any statistically relevant numbers though.
Infineon, last time I checked, was a low-end manufacturer. Well I kind of thought they were.
If your RAM is running warm, I'd suggest popping on a few heatsinks, you can buy copper ones too if needed, scythe makes a bunch of stuff like that::
http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/acc/024/sckw1000bk_detail.html (http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/acc/024/sckw1000bk_detail.html)
(http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/acc/025/images/sckw1000cu-main_400.jpg)
I have samsung DDR2 sticks (with some elpidia) ones in my intellistation, they're six years old now. Work fine as they ever did. ECC too. Ran memtest, passed 100%.
However, I've always maintained dell of being ultra-cheap; this doesn't really help my view on them, heh. It's probably the systemboard that's slowly killing the components, that, or the PSU: I'd wager it's something like LITE-ON.
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I'm using OCZ, no complaints