Troubleshooting the RAM Issues

Here’s the results after several hours of running Memtest86:

DIMMA1/RAM1 + DIMMA2/RAM2 = ERRORS, 8 Passes, 20,000+
DIMMA1/RAM1 + DIMMA2/Empty = ERRORS, 3 Passes, 4,000+
DIMMA1/Empty + DIMMA2/RAM1 = ERRORS, 4 Passes, 793+ (2.7V)
DIMMA1/RAM2 + DIMMA2/Empty = No Errors after 6 passes, 30 minutes
DIMMA1/Empty + DIMMA2/RAM2 = No Errors after 75 passes, 6 hours and 30 minutes

The first stick of RAM had errors in both DIMM slots. Even after bumping up the voltage from 2.60V to 2.70V and slowing down the timings, I was still getting errors. The second stick however was a different story and didn’t have any errors in either slot. It was nearly 1:00AM when I decided to call it quits for the night so I let the good stick of RAM run overnight, over 6 hours, and when I woke up in the morning it was on its 75th pass with no errors. Memtest has once again successfully diagnosed bad RAM. Only one stick was actually bad of the pair, and Kingston claims 100% Tested. For now I’ve been running the machine with the one good stick and the original installation of Windows 2000 is working flawlessly. The next thing to do will be to run Prime95, but I can safely say that the motherboard wasn’t the cause of all the blue screens, it was a bad stick of RAM. Worth noting however, that even a stick of RAM that touts over 20,000 errors in a single hour, can actually allow an entire operating system to install and run and play games for several hours and only seem moderately buggy. Even though we all want systems that run benchmarks flawlessly, having a few errors in the RAM probably isn’t going to take down an entire system. I don’t know what the threshold is though, I personally like to see ZERO errors after hours and hours of running, because then I don’t wonder, what if?

Here’s a link to the datasheet for the RAM I got. I won’t knock Kingston, I mean this kind of thing happens, my other PC has Kingston RAM and I have no problems with it, but my main computer has Corsair and it works great too, and it’s overclocked. However, I think I’ll pick up a pair of Corsair’s ValueSelect RAM to replace these, just to be on the safe side.

Here’s the datasheet from Kingston on this RAM.

This is what one bad stick of RAM looks like after 1-1/2 hours under the gun of Memtest86
badrammemtest86.jpg

This is what one good stick of RAM looks like after 6-1/2 hours.
goodrammemtest86.jpg

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