For those that remember my last thread asking questions on RAM speeds, I have another question I'd like to ask. After the latest Guild Wars 2 update and still getting errors, I finally decided to try moving the game over to the SSD again, since I was getting a different error after each crash. Low and behold it seemed to work. I played for a little while without a single crash and was loving every second of it. My guild was having an event last night and I wanted to participate. Loaded the game and got the BSOD. Now, I always contribute the awful BSOD with faulty RAM, but was having a hard time believing it since I just tested all sticks a couple of weeks ago. I tried my best to join up with my guild buddies but after 5 BSOD I gave up. This morning I started up Memtest86, and out of my three sticks, awaiting my forth to come back to me from G.Skill, apparently one or more shown errors. So, I started testing each stick at a time, and then was going to move to each RAM slot if no errors shown. Each stick takes around 13 minutes for Memtest to go through, but on the last stick shown 1 error at 9 minutes and then busted out all the rest of the errors at 24 minutes. Do faulty sitcks take longer to test within the program? I have never seen Memtest take so long to test a stick of RAM, is what I'm witnessing normal? Also, a quick question to those that have G.Skill RAM. Have any of you had issues with your RAM? I'm very close to trashing all sticks and just buying a new set, since this is my forth stick to go bad on me in less than a year. Does anyone have any recommendations of brands of RAM?

@Spiritgod said:

Do faulty sitcks take longer to test within the program? I have never seen Memtest take so long to test a stick of RAM, is what I'm witnessing normal?

I'm not sure about this one. I guess it would depend on exactly how the stick is faulty. I've had a stick show hundreds of errors in the first ten seconds, and I've run Memtest for five minutes before an error appeared on a different stick.

Also, a quick question to those that have G.Skill RAM. Have any of you had issues with your RAM? I'm very close to trashing all sticks and just buying a new set, since this is my forth stick to go bad on me in less than a year. Does anyone have any recommendations of brands of RAM?

I haven't heard any horror stories about GSkill in particular. It's possible that you have a voltage issue that's messing up your sticks. Do you have a different power supply that you could slap into your case?

@Ravenlight: Nope, no other power supply than the 1000W Silent Pro Gold I'm using. If it were a voltage issue, wouldn't it mess up more than just my RAM? I mean, there is no dedicated power source going directly to the RAM, so I'd assume RAM is sharing the power that the motherboard is using. Also, wouldn't I see more of a problem sooner? I've went 8 months without a single notion that something could be wrong.

@Franstone: My problem is, this is the forth stick in a year. I understood the first bad stick, and started to get a little irritated with the second, but after the third and forth, my patience, time, and effort are wearing thin, and to be honest, having this be the forth doesn't give me much confidence in the company itself. If this happens to be a fault of some other hardware then I'll look back at this post and my feelings toward the company with regret, but everything else works fine, and I honestly haven't a clue what, if anything could be causing RAM to go bad. I don't overclock, both my motherboard and powersupply are fairly new and not cheap. I've tested each RAM slot on the motherboard several times, all four are good. I've checked voltage to the RAM and that checks out as well. Nothing overheats on the motherboard. My only option, that I'm aware of, is to buy new sticks and wait to see if they go bad within a year.

I really hope this doesn't happen to me; I have G.Skill. Most of the reviews that I read were positive, I've only seen a few complaints, but they were regarding mishandling during shipping or the occasional DOA.

@BraveToaster:I hope the same for you as well. I was like you, never heard of the company, and went with them because of all the praise.

Sorry for the phantom post, I thought I read something wrong and was going to re-word my post and got distracted... hah

I didn't realize you've had that many issues with multiple sticks of RAM, which sucks, but also makes me wonder if it in fact is an issue with other hardware.

Like I said, my own experience with G.Skill has been pretty positive yet limited.

Next time I buy RAM (which will probably be G.Skill again) I'll start getting concerned if I receive another faulty stick.

People need to stop posting using their cellphones because that shit is hard to read.

@Franstone: I hope it isn't a hardware issue. I honestly think I just got a bad run of RAM, or maybe the patch mine was picked from were recalled and I didn't know.

@AhmadMetallic: Who are you talking about?

@Devildoll: I thought about that, but no, I used different slots. The first pair happened about 8 months ago, and then the last two happened within a month from each other. It can't be the slot because I left that particular module empty. I was running four, now I'm running two, and my motherboard runs on the 1155 platform. I really do think I just got a bad patch from Newegg.

I have gotten a response from G.Skill. I made it very clear that I wasn't going to be doing a RMA unless postage was paid to and from me, after all, I have spent way more than a customer should on returning a product. The response I was given gave no comfort, and so I was basically forced to purchase some new RAM. This time I went with a company I know and trust, Crucial. I don't like using different brands of RAM at the same time, but I'm going to make an exception.

From memory (haha.) G.Skill sticks - I think the Ripjaw X - did have a bad run at some point in the past (around 16 months ago maybe?) - how isolated that was and how reliable my memory is is questionable. Having said that memory is generally so robust these days that it's just plain bad luck if you go for a reputable brand and have them fail. Crucial and Corsair I would generally consider to be top of the pile in terms of reliability, I've used Corsair in my performance PCs for three generations at least and not had an issue with them, and use Crucial almost exclusively for clients' PCs. I think I've had one stick that went wonky with Crucial in all the years I've been using them.

Regarding testing time with memtest, I've had wildly differing test times with faulty RAM so I would say that when they fail it is par for the course.

Never much cared for them, I'm a Corsair guy myself. That many bad sticks is almost certainly either horrible karma or something else on your rig causing issues though.

@MordeaniisChaos: Thanks mate, I like you too.

@MordeaniisChaos: I like using Corsair too, just went with Crucial this time.

Like I said before, it has to be a bad batch. My voltage and timing are correct, the speed is correct, bad sticks are coming from different modules, nothing is overheating, and all my monitoring software tells me that everything is good. I don't know what else it could be. If it were the motherboard then it would have to me more than one RAM module. I can't imagine it being the power supply since everything else is fine. I've never heard of a video game causing bad RAM, so I don't know.

@Morello: Thanks for the info, I had no idea G.Skill had a bad run. The funny thing is, out of my many years of building PCs, I've never really had too much of an issue with RAM, besides a couple DOA and one of my friends who decided to go too far on the cheap side, all the RAM I've purchased has just worked. I'll just call this bad luck and move on.

@Devildoll: Yeah, I always look into the manual of the motherboad to see recommended RAM layout and install accordingly. My only issue now is dropping this RAM down to 1600 to run with the new sticks. I've never had a reason to drop the speed of RAM, so I hope all goes well.

@Spiritgod: Have you tried it in a different rig? That's the only way to be sure sometimes.

@Tim_the_Corsair: Good! Cause half of my new PC build is going to be your stuff. SSD, RAM, PSU, Speakers.

@MordeaniisChaos: Do you mean the RAM that tested bad or the RAM that's still shows as being good? If you mean the RAM that's still good, it would have to stay inside another PC for several weeks, and even then it wouldn't matter, if it goes bad I know it's still the RAM, if it never goes bad in the other PC then I might just have good RAM or I needed more time with the test. There's no real way of knowing by just putting it in another PC. What I am doing is placing a new set of sticks in the PC, if both sticks go bad within the year then I can safely say I might have another hardware issue that doesn't involve RAM...or that I'm one of the unluckiest PC owners around. But, it doesn't matter, I don't have another desktop to test this theory.