WTF Memory?

[Buradorii]

I recently bought memory upgrades for my computer and for the life of me couldn't figure out that they (well, one of them) were the source of fatal system errors and the like for quite some time. I am now down to half memory for the time being until I (presumably) get a full refund for a faulty memory chip.

That back-story aside, I was wondering why memory chips have such a high rate of failure brand new.

[Bucket]

I recently bought memory upgrades for my computer and for the life of me couldn't figure out that they (well, one of them) were the source of fatal system errors and the like for quite some time. I am now down to half memory for the time being until I (presumably) get a full refund for a faulty memory chip.

That back-story aside, I was wondering why memory chips have such a high rate of failure brand new.

Some brands are better at quality control than others. It might be worth your while to test your new memory in a different computer to see if you can replicate the problem. If you can't, there might be a problem with your motherboard.

Possible issues:

-Slots are good, Memory is bad
-Slots on motherboard are bad, memory good
-Slots on motherboard are bad and turns good memory into bad memory. (it's not terribly common for a motherboard to cook memory, but it can happen and I've seen it. It's hard to diagnose)

[Jeremy]

Like Ben said, buy good brands and test your other components. I go through memory a lot and rarely get a chip DOA.

It's not uncommon though.

[Buradorii]

I had a good friend of mine who graduated with a degree in computer science help me build my current computer, so I let him do most of the decision making. I have an Asus P7P55 LX Motherboard with Corsair brand memory (2 4Gigs).

I'm pretty sure the slots are good and it was just that bad memory.

[Jeremy]

Your chips might have just been DOA, I wouldn't necessarily say that's a "high rate of failure" though. :o

Send them in for RMA and get some new ones. ;)