Memory Upgrade or Replacement?

[FattyLumpkin]

Greetings! My beloved computer has been locking up lately. I tried about 10 things including reinstalling windows and running HD tests. It was the Windows Memory Test that told me the RAM has an issue. It won't be specific but I'm going to dig into it. There are 2 sticks of 8GB RAM so I guess I need to find out which one is bad. Two questions....

1) Do I just yank one out and rerun the tests?

2) Is it worth upgrading at this point? Frankly, the machine is only a year old and the prices for better memory seem expensive. I have DDR3-2133 Memory G.SKILL Ripjaws X with a ASRock X79 Extreme9 - 5x PCI-E x16, 8x SATA 6Gbs 4x USB 3.0 motherboard. If I do decide to upgrade does anyone have a suggestion?

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

 

[brispuss]

Yes, try one DIMM at a time, and in different slots as well. This will help determine/confirm whether the DIMM's and/or the slots are faulty.

Upgrading. I don't think it is really necessary if you continue to use two 8 GB DIMM's rated at DDR3-2133 in dual channel configuration as they should be quite adequate for most tasks/gaming unless intensive graphics work is proposed. In which case more memory would probably be advisable.

 

[FattyLumpkin]

Thanks brispuss! I never even considered altering the slots to check that. Hmmm....I should probably do it step by step doing the slots after just checking the RAM?

And I agree about upgrading. I just thought I'd ask people who know better than I do.

 

[brispuss]

Yes. Test one DIMM in one slot. Regardless if DIMM appears to be faulty or not, try the DIMM in another slot and so on. Repeat steps for the other DIMM. This procedure will find any faulty DIMM's and any faulty slots.

 

[FattyLumpkin]

I removed each of the 2 sticks of RAM one at a time and then ran the Windows Memory test on each. They were in slots 2 & 4, respectively. Here is what happened. The test reported that there were problems with the first stick. Hours later when the computer froze again I took the stick out and tried the other one in it's original slot. The test again said it detected memory problems.

Is the motherboard bad? Could both sticks be defective? What should I do?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

 

[brispuss]

It is possible that the DIMM's AND the motherboard may be faulty.

Try DIMM's ONE at a time in slot 1, and then slot 3 if there are problems while using slot 1. Repeat procedure for the other DIMM.

Get hold of known working DIMM's (at hand or borrow some) and test again. If there are still problems, then, at the very least, the DIMM slots are faulty.

You could also try the original DIMM's in another known working computer. This will confirm whether the original DIMM's are faulty or not.

 

[FattyLumpkin]

Hi Brispuss...thanks again for the speedy reply. Great advice but I don't have another computer that would take these or working RAM that would fit the problematic machine. I'm going to try the other slots as you suggested. I'm also working on seeing if Corsair will replace the RAM.

A tech support guy at ibuypower.com (where I had this built) just told me that RAM has an 80% chance of being bad so it's probably the RAM. He claimed motherboards have a 20% chance of going bad. Man, those numbers seem high to me.