RAM Memory Troubleshooting & Diagnosis Part 2 Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,371 words · ~6 min read
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after I got so many great messages on YouTube about the RAM testing video I
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uploaded yesterday see I've got four sticks going here
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now I thought I'd do an update video just to address a lot of the questions
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and concerns and comments that you guys had so as you can see I did finish my
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24-hour test with the three modules I had before which were running in trip
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Channel just want to clarify this someone was a little bit confused about
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uh how you can run triple channel in a quad Channel motherboard so to clarify
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guys any dual Channel motherboard is capable of running single Channel any
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triple Channel motherboard is capable of running dual Channel or single Channel
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and any quad Channel motherboard is capable of running single dual or triple
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or quad channel so the way that you do that is you populate the dim slots in
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the correct order so here you can see we've got
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A1 and B1 right there so if you wanted to run a
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dual Channel you'd go A1 B1 then if you
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wanted to run in triple Channel you'd populate C1 and if you wanted to run in
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Quad Channel you'd populate D1 so there you go that's how you do it right now
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it's running in Quad Channel because I do have four memory sticks in here I
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also had a lot of people commenting on the fact that I wasn't using m test 86
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mest 86 is awesome great memory diagnostic utility it runs before the
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operating system which is really really good it tests all of the memory and it throws up big red errors if it detects
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anything the problem is that the issue I was having was not being detected by
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mest 86 so the reason I was stubbornly using prime 95 is because I don't I'm a
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little bit old school and I'm not using uh Linc s linac or any of the other sort
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of Intel burn chest these are all tools that I haven't really used that much
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plus I knew that I could consistently reproduce the errors on these sticks
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with a prime 95 test after a certain amount of time this is just a test bench
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this is not my main machine so I'm not that concerned with it not being running
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at any given moment so the fact that
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mest 86 wasn't working for me is what prompted me to use prime 95 if mem test
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Works to detect the error that you're getting then that's great however there
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are even times Prime 95 detects nothing m test 86 comes up with errors in like 5
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seconds so you can never really predict which tool is going to be the one that
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is going to find the problem with what you're doing although people in the
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comments are right generally speaking mest 86 is the first one to go for they
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have all kinds of awesome ways to run it so you can just burn the iso to a CD
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which is what I usually do just cuz I'm lazy um or they actually have see I just
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didn't want to empty a USB drive they have a USB drive Creator so you just
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throw a blank USB drive in and it will go ahead and fix all that up for you so
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uh right what other people asked that was really really really good yes this
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is a really good one so people a lot of people asked how did you ru rule out the
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motherboard the CPU the power supply all
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that stuff so this is a very important part of any sort of troubleshooting
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scenario is you got to make sure am I actually isolating the right component
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so I knew it was the RAM because I'd had this motherboard with this CPU with this
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power supply running with this Kingston
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hyperx memory at these speeds
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so600 uh C9 ont command rate all of that
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good stuff so that's how I ruled out the motherboard that's how I ruled out the
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CPU and the power supply you got to rule out things like heat I'm running on an
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open test platform with air flow directly over the fan or the RAM itself
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so we can pretty much rule out heat how do you rule out your RAM settings well
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because this memory was running at these settings in the past so that's how I
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know that it should be fine assuming nothing's gone wrong with it in the
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meantime so these are my two dead this one errors in Prime 95 this one
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errors in a multi- channel configuration
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eventually aha that's another one I had a lot of people commenting lonus you
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idiot why didn't you just run one stick at a time guys if you'd watch the video
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you'd know I had already run all of the sticks individually this stick the one
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right there on the left passes on its own but as soon as you put it in a
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multi- channel configuration it the entire thing fails whereas all of these
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sticks all together in a multi Channel config are not failing so that's how I
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know that this guy right here with the duct tape is dead that one on the left
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is borderline which is not good enough it's for all intents and purposes dead
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but it's much harder to catch compared to one that's just outright dead doesn't
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post or causes blue screens right away so I think that pretty much covers
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it thank you for checking out this sort of updated video on diagnosing memory I
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hope this clar clears up some of the questions you guys had don't forget to
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videos I love this camera using the fs700 today I was using the XA 10 last
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time the mic's terrible though I don't have my lapel mic I'm using the shotgun
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mic that's on the top so before you complain about the audio just I know
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it's the wrong mic it's bad oh well
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you'll get over
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it I'm sorry one more thing in spite of my warnings to the contrary I did have a
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couple people saying oh my R is stable enough it worked in games and just cuz
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it fails in Prime 95 after an hour doesn't mean it's not yes it does it
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means it's not stable it isn't stable it's not good enough uh if it ever
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crashes when your computer's doing something critical it can completely corrupt your entire OS and make it non-
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bootable the odds of that happening I don't know you roll that die uh last
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thing is it has to be stable in every in
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every stress test it has to be stable in Prime stable in m test stable in Linux a
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stable system is stable and doesn't make mistakes when I'm done this Prime 95
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test just for good measure because remember that fourth stick has been in
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my wife's machine so I for all I know it's dead too so I'm going to run the
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whole thing through m test 86 again once I'm done here in order to reassure
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myself that all of this is working completely 100% before I redeploy it in
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a system and another thing I forgot I had
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a lot of people saying lius you have so much memory why don't you just throw it
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away and buy new memory memory is so cheap what are you crazy throw away
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Hardware jeez way to be money bags no you don't
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throw away Hardware you test it you see if it works
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if it works you keep it if it doesn't
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work then you throw it away