Info Cleaning your RAM sticks with a pencil eraser.

[Alan Alan]

Hi guys, My computer is 5 years old, it's in a damp basement. Anyway out of the sky blue the computer would not start up. The yellow memory indicator on the board stayed solid indicating a memory problem. It would not continue checking anything else. So all I did was pull the RAM modules, rub the contact with a pencil eraser, used an air compressor to blow the debris off and installed them. Poof, just that easy. It works like a charm. Note, I did wear an antistatic wrist band the entire time. I guess humidity still oxidizes what appear to be gold plated contacts. My guess, not pure gold. Oxidation in some metals can be harder than the metal itself, it's not always visible red rust. Learned that from a metallurgist.

 

[lvt]

Cotton buds and alcohol work far better, especially in the Covid era .

 

[Alan Alan]

Cotton buds and alcohol work far better, especially in the Covid era .

Lol, I head about alcohol killing covid infected cheap gold plating. Lol

What bad is when you try a liquid cleaner made to clean gold contacts and it doesn't work.
Common rubbing alcohol has oil mixed with. It might be the oil that soaks into the thin hard film of oxidation.
I might try spraying that into the sockets because you'll play hell getting an eraser in a memory slot. lol

 

[Karadjgne]

CRC Electronics Cleaner or 100% pure isopropyl alcohol. You can use Contact Cleaner as well, but it's not guaranteed plastic safe, so may marr some plastic heatsink covers visually. Also there's no oils used in the 90% and up iso's, you'll only find oils used in the 50% and Witch Hazel varieties, and thats only for fragrance purposes.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi guys, My computer is 5 years old, it's in a damp basement. Anyway out of the sky blue the computer would not start up. The yellow memory indicator on the board stayed solid indicating a memory problem. It would not continue checking anything else. So all I did was pull the RAM modules, rub the contact with a pencil eraser, used an air compressor to blow the debris off and installed them. Poof, just that easy. It works like a charm. Note, I did wear an antistatic wrist band the entire time. I guess humidity still oxidizes what appear to be gold plated contacts. My guess, not pure gold. Oxidation in some metals can be harder than the metal itself, it's not always visible red rust. Learned that from a metallurgist.

I like DeOxIt Gold G100L on lint free lab wipes for all my contact cleaning.

 

[Karadjgne]

The DeOxIt Gold also has oxidation inhibitors, that many others don't, while remaining residue free as such. Which can be somewhat more of a blessing over time vs scrubbing with a pencil eraser.

 

[Alan Alan]

Hey guys, guess what, I tried Deoxit G5 and it didn't work. I thought the mobo had a problem because I couldn't get any one of the four memory sticks to work as a single memory. Thought the board was bad and possibly ruined all 4 modules. Ordered and installed a new motherboard and got the exact same problem. So I figured it had to be 4 bad memory sticks and was ready to order a new set. Then I remembered reading about the pencil eraser, this guy said not to use contact cleaner but use 91 percent isopropyl alcoohol to clean off the contact after using a pencil eraser. I laughed when I read that because I had G5, and look what that laugh cost me. Like I said in the post, the gold is not pure 24 k gold. It's a blend and my best guess is the other ingredients in the gold plating created some hard thin layer of something that is non conductive. I used on of those large pencil erasers like and inch square and a half inch thick. A like oxide inhibitors for the most part but where high frequencies exist as in the memory contacts it might have some reactive properties. It definitely does when it's first applied. I've had to wait 20 minutes for that stuff to dry after spraying a usb connector with it. I've also sprayed the video card pcie with no success and changed a video card. So it's very possible that video card just need an eraser on its connections. I'm going to find out in the near future.

 

[lvt]

Please stop using school furniture on your hardware

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I actually talked to a tech from Hawaii once who said use gold cleaner from the jewelry counter of a department store such as walmart. The reason he said that was that in Hawaii they are surrounded by ocean and people would bring in systems that didn't want to boot and they would use the gold cleaner on the contacts of ram sticks etc and that would get it going for a while.

 

[Karadjgne]

An eraser works. No question about that. The only real issue is that it can work too well if a hair too much pressure is used. It'll literally tear the plating right off the pcb, it's extremely thin and quite fragile. If that happens, you'll be buying new ram, there is no repair.

 

[Alan Alan]

I found another electronics repair guy who also knows the root cause of what you might think is bad memory. I was in electronics for 40 years and this IS a common problem. Save some time, money and aggravation. https://computerinfobits.com/how-to-clean-ram-contacts/

 

[Alan Alan]

I actually talked to a tech from Hawaii once who said use gold cleaner from the jewelry counter of a department store such as walmart. The reason he said that was that in Hawaii they are surrounded by ocean and people would bring in systems that didn't want to boot and they would use the gold cleaner on the contacts of ram sticks etc and that would get it going for a while.

Yep, it's the ocean salt in the humidity. I've seen boards eaten alive. The copper traces were ruined. This is a major problem for anyone living where you can smell salt in the air. I guess a dehumidifier would help. But thanks for confirming the problem.