Lee Marzke on 3 Jan 2010 16:05:08 -0800


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Re: [PLUG] Another System w/ Instability


Casey Bralla wrote:
> Believe it or not, I've got __another__ system with instability problems.   
>
>
> I bought a new motherboard, RAM, & CPU for Christmas for a light-duty server.   
> It was giving me some spontaneous reboots, so I've been running the memtest 
> program.  It's gotten a lot worse in the last few hours, but the results are a 
> little strange to me.  I was hoping someone here could help me understand.
>
> (No, Eric, this one runs Debian, so I haven't worn it out by compiling 
> everything <grin>)
>
>
> There are 2 DIMM slits and I have a matched pair of two 2-GByte DDR2-800 
> DIMMs.   If I put either of the DIMMs in either slot, it runs fine.  However, 
> if I put BOTH DIMMs in, the system reboots about 10 seconds into the memtest 
> routine.
>
> I put a pair of 1-GByte DDR-1066 DIMMs I had in another computer into this 
> server (both slots) and it ran fine.
>
> I've also tried raising the voltage and slowing the access to DDR2-400 speeds, 
> but nothing has helped.
>
>
> I'm concluding that the RAM is bad and will RMA it to New Egg.   But I'm 
> feeling a little uncomfortable about this.   Might it be the motherboard 
> that's bad?   How can RAM be good when run as a single chip, but fail in 
> pairs?
>
> BTW, when I run them in pairs, they are in interleaved mode, but obviously are 
> not interleaved when run as a single DIMM.
>   

I've had the exact problem with Kingston RAM I got on Ebay ( luckily
Kingston replaces it with no questions )

Separately each chip tested fine, but when in interleaved mode, only the
original pair worked,  and the new pair I bought failed.    Both pairs
were 2-2-2-5 timings (CL2) as well.

Luckily I spotted the problem by running memory tests at install, so the
system was never unstable.

Lee

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