Bad ram stick? Anything I can do?

j.snyder7485 · Jul 26, 2018

I decided to upgrade the ram in my laptop. Both new sticks are the same. When I installed both, the laptop would turn on (the keyboard would light up), but the screen stayed black. I tested both ram sticks individually, and one of the sticks works just fine in both ports. Laptop boots up, no problem. The other stick doesn't seem to work in either port. At least, the laptop screen won't turn on with the second stick. I'm just making sure it's the stick of ram that's faulty and not something I'm missing since in other posts, when someone has a bad stick of ram, they seem to at least get an error or a continuous reboot or something. I've got nothing. Is there a way to check for sure that the ram is bad?

RememberThe5th · Jul 26, 2018

First I would check if the RAM slot pins are aligned.
Then I would test in another laptop if possible, or go to local PC shop and let them test.
Then I would call it Dead, and probably RMA it if under warranty.

geofelt · Jul 26, 2018

The problem could be that you bought individual sticks, not a matched pair.
Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
A motherboard must manage all the ram using the same specs of voltage, cas and speed.
The internal workings are designed for the capacity of the kit.
Ram from the same vendor and part number can be made up of differing manufacturing components over time.
Some motherboards, can be very sensitive to this.

If you can not boot with one of the sticks, it is likely bad.

Sounds to me like it is ram time.

To be certain you get something that works, to a ram web site like Kingston crucial or corsair.
Access their ram upgrade app.
Enter your motherboard and you will get a list of supported kits.

The gold standard for testing ram is memtest86.
You should be able to complete a full pass with NO errors.

j.snyder7485 · Jul 26, 2018

geofelt :

I don't think my motherboard is particularly picky about ram since I'm currently running two totally different ram sticks. One is a crucial 16gb, and the other is an sk hynix 8gb - both ddr4 and same voltage. They're both installed in the laptop I'm using to type this and working perfectly, with all 24gb of ram showing up under installed ram.

The two 16gb crucial sticks I bought are the exact same, but I did buy them from an independent seller, not crucial, and they came in two separate, unmarked static bags so may not have come from the same kit. Although I'm thinking it's more likely that they did but one stick crapped out and the seller sold them as a pair anyway.

I'll look into memtest86. Would you, like Robert Ban, also suggest I take the questionable stick to a PC shop for testing to be sure? Micro Center charges $30 for the test.

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Bad ram stick? Anything I can do?

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