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Crashes + memtest errors = return?

Elec

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 20, 2000
Messages
1,944
Hey guys, here's what I've got:

Barton 2500+ @ 10.5x200 (unlocked)
Epox 8RDA+
2x256 Geil PC3200 ultra (CAS 2 6-3-3)
Radeon 9700
other stuff

The Geil sticks have run flawlessly at 200MHz and the specified timings for a year and a half now (including a 12 hour run of memtest with no errors). I decided to bump up to a gig, so I bought a 512 meg stick of Geil PC3200 ultra spec'ed for the same timings, basically the same RAM. Brought it home, popped it in, got crashes within a few minutes. I figured that my mobo wasn't liking the combination of sticks and timings, so I set the timings to 2.5 8-4-4 and tried that. Still crashes, failed Prime95 within 4 minutes, etc. So I pulled out the two older sticks and just left in the new one. Back to CAS 2 6-3-3 and memtest threw a few errors on test 4, a couple dozen on 5, and about 180 on 8. Set the stick back to 2.5 8-4-4 and it still threw errors. Voltage at default or 2.9V, didn't matter. Different slots, didn't matter. I'd settle for somewhat slower timings using all 3 sticks because it's dual channel and mismatched sizes and banks full and all that, but something ain't right if the one stick alone won't run advertised speed and timings.

So I'm guessing that this is just a bad stick and it'll have to go back to Fry's for an exchange. Anybody care to confirm or know whether Fry's will be bitchy about this?
 
Ok then, back it goes! Hope the replacement is good, don't wanna get banned from Fry's if they keep giving me bad sticks and I have to keep taking 'em back :D
 
Hopefully that doesn't happen. But most manufacturers are pretty leinant when it comes to returns, as you can expect any mass produced electric part to have some bad apples.
 
Got it exchanged no problem. Haven't got around to testing the new one yet.

It was pretty funny though, I told the guy it was defective, said it crashed my box and caused errors in a testing program. So he asked which one, I said memtest, he said "Memtest86?" and I laughed and said "That's the one!" Hilarious, if you said memtest at Best Buy probably nobody in the store would have a clue what you were talking about. There was a sign on the wall that said something like "Due to system differences and integration issues, all products from the following categories will be tested before returns or refunds are issued" and then listed CPUs, hard drives, video cards, memory, etc. I'm assuming they test returned RAM with memtest. Since I'd already done that, the guy probably didn't feel the need to hold me up with further testing :D

Also because I didn't want to give the original sales guy my personal info, he made up a phone number for me and listed my name as "Captain Awesome-o". Heh.
 
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