A small Tip... RAM issues

I just wanted to share/vent with you the frustration involved with getting corrupt ram. I had noticed my computer that i just built starting to get bluescreens, and randomly programs would give me errors. I thought I had too much Overclock on my system, so i restored it to default settings. This fixed the problems for a while, then all at once, My system wouldnt boot back up, it'd get to the loading windows screen and crash every time. I ran memtest86+ and got errors upon errors. After taking one stick out, I got errors still. So i tried the other stick. No errors with that one. So i try to boot up windows...

Unfortunatly, I'd been using my corrupt memory too long, and the drive was beyond fixing. I had to format, and reinstall everything. So... I guess my point is... When you get new memory, regardless of overclocking or not, do yourself a favor and run memtest or a similar program on it... Will save you hours of reinstall time and frustration.

Jelly

i had an old abit MB that burnt out ram like clockwork once a year. same symptoms only after id replace it i didnt have to reformat. big pain in the ass so after 3 years i bought a new MB and its going on another 3 years now with no issues. i talked to guy and he said something about the silver in the pins being irregular and some pins conducting more electricity than others causing burnouts. i have zero proof to support that statement but it did turn out to be the MB so who knows.

I'd Like to add , Crucial Support is GREAT... And all thier ram is lifetime warranty. I have OCZ Reaper Ram on the way tho... so im limping along on 1gb lol. They sent me a RMA number the VERY next day I submitted the request. And, when i emailed in response, asking if i was to return one, or both sticks, i got a response within the hour. Props to Corsair for speedy customer support.

Jelly

I had a bad experience years ago with Corsair memory and I refuse to use them ever again. Kingston and PNY? Too many problems getting replacements for both. Get burned once by a company or a manufacturer and they'll be hard pressed to get you back as a customer. I've never had a problem with Crucial so that's the only memory I use now.

One of the most difficult things I've ever had to identify on a new PC build was having a faulty CPU. I knew I had a hardware problem and after swapping out the memory, the power supply, the hard disk, and the mobo, the only thing left was the CPU. Sure enough,after replacing that everything was smooth sailing. I'm still using that PC today.

I'm having this problem currently. Maybe I should check my RAM with memtest. I installed 8GB of crucial 6400 and I couldn only start up my system with a special song and dance. I downgraded to 4GB, since I was tired of messing with BIOS settings and then I started getting BSOD. Maybe I should switch out that 4GB with my other 4GB.... ticks me off.