Bad RAM?

Hey guys, sorry if this has been asked a million times, and I appreciate any help I can get here.

I recently bough an alienware with 2 gigs of Patriot Viper 1066mhz 5-5-5-15 RAM, and I figured I would upgrade to 4gb for via another website, since alienware didn't offer 4 gigs(turns out I get vista32, yay!! oops.. :heink: )

Stupidity aside, I will buy windows 7 64bit when hit comes out to increase my RAM... getting to the point, when I plugged all 4 sticks in my PC, I got a nice'ol BSOD, hadn't seen one in years.. I restart, and fire up Crysis to see how 3gigs fares, crashes after, oh 30 seconds of gameplay, now I'm suspicious... I pull out my good RAM and put the others in the Dual channel sockets and just use them... Crashing and other crap ensues, I download memtest and stop the test at 2.x% as I ended up with about 20 or so errors in 2% of my memory.

Now I am currently testing the stuff I got from alienware, to see if this program is viable, so far, I'm at 80% and only have 2 errors.. so, either the RAM I ordered is junk, or I screwed up somewhere along the line of taking identicle RAM thats already in my PC, out of the package, opening my case, plugging it into the 2 extra slots closing my case and turning my PC back on..

the bottom line is, should I return this stuff or did I screw up?

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You can use CPU-Z to display the SPD tables of the old and the new RAM. If they are identical, then the new RAM might be bad, incompatible or it requires manual settings for timings and voltage.

Reply to GhislainG

samus989 wrote :

Hey guys, sorry if this has been asked a million times, and I appreciate any help I can get here.

I recently bough an alienware with 2 gigs of Patriot Viper 1066mhz 5-5-5-15 RAM, and I figured I would upgrade to 4gb for via another website, since alienware didn't offer 4 gigs(turns out I get vista32, yay!! oops.. :heink: )

Stupidity aside, I will buy windows 7 64bit when hit comes out to increase my RAM... getting to the point, when I plugged all 4 sticks in my PC, I got a nice'ol BSOD, hadn't seen one in years.. I restart, and fire up Crysis to see how 3gigs fares, crashes after, oh 30 seconds of gameplay, now I'm suspicious... I pull out my good RAM and put the others in the Dual channel sockets and just use them... Crashing and other crap ensues, I download memtest and stop the test at 2.x% as I ended up with about 20 or so errors in 2% of my memory.

Now I am currently testing the stuff I got from alienware, to see if this program is viable, so far, I'm at 80% and only have 2 errors.. so, either the RAM I ordered is junk, or I screwed up somewhere along the line of taking identicle RAM thats already in my PC, out of the package, opening my case, plugging it into the 2 extra slots closing my case and turning my PC back on..

the bottom line is, should I return this stuff or did I screw up?

It's harder to get four modules stable, and the stuff you bought probably required higher voltage anyway. You can make the changes in BIOS, and if it doesn't work, try "only the new stuff" and "only the old stuff" separately to determine if it's really bad RAM.

Reply to Crashman

Ok well first, I tried JUST the bad ram, and yes, it still screws up badly.

I did notice that the new RAM's TRCs are slightly slower than the RAM that came with my machine, but I thought that was more of an overall performance issue, and since they were on the lower voltage settings (JEDEC#1 though 3, 1.8v) vs what I have it set at (EPP, 2.1v), so I thought that those wouldn't matter.

They are the same brand, same model... everything, so I dont think compatibility is the issue... and I am loathe to play with voltage settings in the BIOS unless I absolutely have to, but again, I dont see how voltage would be the issue, its set to 2.1v in the BIOS.

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Reply to samus989

samus989 wrote :

Ok well first, I tried JUST the bad ram, and yes, it still screws up badly.

I did notice that the new RAM's TRCs are slightly slower than the RAM that came with my machine, but I thought that was more of an overall performance issue, and since they were on the lower voltage settings (JEDEC#1 though 3, 1.8v) vs what I have it set at (EPP, 2.1v), so I thought that those wouldn't matter.

They are the same brand, same model... everything, so I dont think compatibility is the issue... and I am loathe to play with voltage settings in the BIOS unless I absolutely have to, but again, I dont see how voltage would be the issue, its set to 2.1v in the BIOS.

Try changing to automatic memory timings and see if the problem goes away.

Reply to Crashman

If you just bought a machien with Vista32, you should have gotten a free win7 upgrade.

Reply to zipzoomflyhigh

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