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Thread: RAM failing over time?

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    RAM failing over time?

    So, I've been having strange problems with Firefox crashing and BSODs, usually after my system has be either on or in standby for an extended period of time and I've been blaming it on FF being buggy, but just now FF wouldn't remain open for 10 minutes and BSODs would shortly follow. As usual BSOD error messages aren't terribly useful but I saw stuff about memory/kernel/driver errors. I've just booted into Memtest and within seconds I got errors scrolling down the page, but I ran Memtest a few weeks back for a few hours and it passed. The only explanation I can think of is the RAM has somehow deteriorated over time - is this normal? I thought with RAM it was normally a case of DOA or work fine?

    To rule out CPU/mobo/other problems I'm running Memtest on a spare 1GB stick and it's not shown anything after nearly a full pass so I think it's this RAM. I'll try one at a time and so on later. It shouldn't be a huge problem as I think this Crucial RAM has a lifetime warranty, I'm just finding this a bit odd...

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    • smargh's system
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    Re: RAM failing over time?

    Put the old stick(s) back in and see if it's okay now. Did the BSODs start perhaps after you worked inside the PC? Do you remember if the retention clips were fully in place? You didn't accidentally stab the PCB with a screwdriver or something like that?

    I've seen this kind of thing when a stick was only slightly not fully slotted in, which damaged it just enough to cause intermittent problems. It was an ECC stick in a cheap server, though, so it just instantly rebooted whenever there was an unrecoverable ECC error.

    In case this problem started getting worse around the time when FF4 was released, then it does GPU acceleration, if that might be a factor - i.e. shared memory etc.

    Perhaps also give the slots a good blast with a can of air to dislodge any dirt or dust obstructing any contacts.

    Use bluescreenview from nirsoft to look at the minidump logs (if you have them), just in case there's anything of interest.

    Apologies if you've already thought of all this stuff.

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    Senior Member watercooled's Avatar
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    Re: RAM failing over time?

    I tried the sticks one at a time then both together and strangely they seem to be working fine now. I think the theory on dust sounds about right. The memory dumps weren't overly useful. The RAM was running at JDEC timings i.e. all default settings, mainly because the system isn't really used for anything high-performance, but I've now manually set the RAM to the rated specs i.e. 2.0v instead of 1.8v, manually set the clock and I did lower the timings but at 2.0v I don't think that should be a problem - I've run RAM at the enhanced timings at 1.8v a few times and never encountered any problems.

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