Lots of errors on memtest 86 v4.0 test 7

[theholychicken]

Hello,

I just built a new desktop,

Phenom II x6 1090T
ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 mobo, BIOS 2001
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance RAM (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B)
600W Coolermaster PSU
Other stuff (60GB OCZ SSD with Win 7 Ultimate, 1 TB WD HHD) <-- these aren't plugged in atm

It was working for a few days, then started randomly BSODing while watching a movie or sitting there idle. Windows memory test or whatever it's called doesn't detect any errors, but memtest86 does.

I've tested both sticks together, individually, and in all of the slots individually. They all fail test 7, giving me thousands of errors. I have also tried setting everything on AUTO in BIOS, manual (upped the voltages, put in the stock timings, etc) and everything is still the same.

The interesting thing is when I burned memtest 86, it came with v3.5 also, and I can choose to run that and it doesn't give any errors. I read somewhere that they changed it such that v4.0 uses all the cores, and that going from a single to a dual will increase the stress by a significant amount.

^^The last sentence I think I misread and it was changed for use with multiple processors, not cores.

Is there a possibility that the settings are causing instability, or are both my RAMs just bad? Any recommended settings to test?

I'm going to get my friends' desktop tonight and run memtest with his mobo/my RAM and his RAM/my mobo to see if I can find anything.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Guest]

Interesting that Memtest86 3.5 didn't show any errors as it was known to fail on computers with more than 4GB of memory. It also hadn't been updated for a really long time until recently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memtest86

I personally use Memtest86+ which was a branch off from the original and has had more frequent updates and fixes. You can download Memtest86+ v4.2 at www.memtest.org and give that a try to see if it has similar results. As always it is suggested to start testing at stock settings and then change accordingly.

 

[theholychicken]

I've been testing with memtest86+ and it didn't give any errors individually or together. Now I'm curious why memtest86 fails... When it does it's a huge list of them so it's not like there are bad chunks the whole test #7 fails, maybe some incompatibility issue?

I'll leave memtest86+ running tonight, but is it ok to disregard the memtest86 failure/errors? I've never had to use both and get different results before.

 

[Guest]

If you get good results with Memtest86+ after running all night, it would be a safe bet that your memory is fine and it's time to look elsewhere for your troubleshooting. Possibly outdated system drivers? Virus/Spywire infestations can cause sporadic system instability and BSODs. Read through your event logs in Windows Administration and see if that shines some light on the situation.

 

[theholychicken]

Best answer selected by theholychicken.