Memory Controller or Faulty RAM

horsovski

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Mar 26, 2007
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I have a 16GB Corsair KIT (4x4) that's about 5 years old. Lately I've noticed few blue screen's here and there but in general computer has been working very well and still is, without any major problems.

So I decided to memtest my RAM and surprisingly it failed. Then I tested each stick individually in slot 1 an 2 (recommended slots by Asus) and out of the 4 sticks 1 was failing both slots, but 3 came out without errors in both slots. Then I decided to take those working 3 sticks and test them together in pairs in dual channel, but surprisingly it showed errors when running them in dual channel.

What does this mean? I can send them to corsair for RMA since 1/4 sticks was not OK in both slots, but then why did the other 3 work in single but not in dual mode?

 
Solution
CPUs rarely fail, it takes a lot. That said 4 DIMMs do stress the memory controller more than 2, and then if you ran the computer hard a lot I guess I could see it happening, but its really a stretch.

I like Dunlop's idea of upping the voltage a bit to see if that helps. If it does that very well could indicate the CPU is the issue, if it doesn't I would RMA the ram and see what happens with new RAM.

Dunlop0078

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You sure corsair will still RMA 5 year old ram? Could be the memory controller in the cpu, what cpu do you have? If the sticks pass in single channel but not dual channel the ram might not be the issue at all, I believe duel channel puts more of a load on the memory controller. Could be the cpu.
 

horsovski

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It's i7 3770k. Corsair has a lifetime warranty on RAM.

That's what I've been thinking as well, but did you read that 1 stick out of the 4 was constantly producing errors in single channel as well, while others 3 didn't. But those 3 failed it dual channel so this is pretty weird and I'm not sure what to do next?

 

Dunlop0078

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Yeah missed that. Not sure if this will work but I would try upping the voltage to ram, maybe 1.55v at first if they are currently at 1.5v. I know cpu's can sometimes degrade to the point where you need to add voltage to keep them running stable I would assume the same is true for ram. Especially if nothing has changed, have you been messing around with any settings in the BIOS?
 

Rogue Leader

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CPUs rarely fail, it takes a lot. That said 4 DIMMs do stress the memory controller more than 2, and then if you ran the computer hard a lot I guess I could see it happening, but its really a stretch.

I like Dunlop's idea of upping the voltage a bit to see if that helps. If it does that very well could indicate the CPU is the issue, if it doesn't I would RMA the ram and see what happens with new RAM.
 
Solution

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
Sounds like one stick may be weak or going bad if errors when tested by itself, the three that had no errors sound good (keep in mind you can get false errors when running multiple sticks). Can try upping DRAM and/or MC voltage + 0.05 and it might stabilize with all 4
 

horsovski

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My Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe supports RAM up to 1.5v only.
 

Rogue Leader

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Yeah thats the stock ram voltage, however in the overclock settings or XMP settings you should be able to adjust the memory voltage.