[PLUG] Another System w/ Instability

[Casey Bralla <MailList@nerdworld.org>]

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.
-- 


Casey Bralla

Chief Nerd in Residence
The NerdWorld Organisation

http://www.NerdWorld.org
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