Ram keeps going bad.

[65caliente]

Hi there, I'm new for the most part besides my one post about build suggestions. Anywho I ended up building a rig as follows:

Motherboard: Asrock z68 professional Fatality

CPU: i5 2500k

Memory: 16 gb cosair vengeance low profile (to fit under the noctua cooler for the cpu)

PSU: corsair HX 1050

GPU: 2x gigabyte windforce 7950's

Storage: 2x corsair force 3 120 gb's in raid for OS and apps, 1.5 tb seagate green for other storage

Case: corsair carbide 400r

cpu cooler: Noctua nh-d14

OS: windows 7 64 bit

Anyways I was able to overclock the cpu to 4.5 ghz with voltage in offset mode set to +.200. I didn't mess with overclocking the ram. It ran great for a couple days when I started getting random BSOD's and windows 7 freezes. It got to the point were windows would freeze before I could even login to it. So I figured that windows somehow got corrupted so I formatted the ssd's and attempted to reinstall windows only to be greeted by BSOD's in the windows installation making it impossible to install. So I started to remove components and ended up removing half of my ram. Upon doing this The problems went away and I was able to install windows without any problems. Everything was running great for a couple hours until the BSOD's reappeared and windows would get stuck at the animation loading screen. I decided to clear the cmos (as I set the overclock back to 4.5 ghz) and after doing that windows loaded fine. Next I ran Memtest which told me I had 21 errors after 50% of the ram was scanned...so For some reason my ram is going bad.

I RMA'd all parts that I could connect to ram going bad (PSU, Motherboard, Ram, and CPU) back to newegg to rule out bad hardware and am awaiting my replacement parts. Here are my questions:

1. If the hardware wasn't the problem then what could I have been doing wrong to cause the ram to go bad? I'm a noob at overclocking but from what I read I wasn't doing anything extreme (4.5 ghz with offset of +.200, I didn't touch any other settings) and I didn't even mess with overclocking the ram.

2. Is it possible for video cards to effect ram because those are the only other thing that I could think of that could effect it?

Thanks

 

[davcon]

Simple you received faulty ram.= PITA
When you get the replacement ram back,test it,one stick at a time.
Running memory test software isn't helpful with all the ram installed btw.
All it takes is one faulty stick in a set to cause all sorts of problems..
Testing one stick at a time isolates the faulty stick.

 

[65caliente]

Okay I will, can I just have one stick in at a time?? One thing I didn't mention because I didn't think it was a big deal was that I bought 2 8 gb kits of the ram. I was told here : (http://www.overclock.net/t/1225545/can-overclocking-cpu-cause-ram-to-go-bad) that it can cause problems with the memory working together if I don't buy an entire kit together. Thanks for the help.

 

[65caliente]

Best answer selected by 65caliente.

 

[davcon]

Okay I will, can I just have one stick in at a time?? One thing I didn't mention because I didn't think it was a big deal was that I bought 2 8 gb kits of the ram. I was told here : (http://www.overclock.net/t/1225545/can-overclocking-cpu-cause-ram-to-go-bad) that it can cause problems with the memory working together if I don't buy an entire kit together. Thanks for the help.

Yep your rig will run with only one stick..
I bought two seperate kits as well.
Both were identical kits.
And yes one of the sticks was bad.
Caused all kinds of grief until i tested one stick at a time and found the culprit.
Good thing about it though is i still had ram and a working pc while i waited for rma replacement.