Diagnosing RAM Issues: Faulty Stick or Motherboard Malfunction?

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anotherwindowsuser

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Hi,

So I ordered new ram (second hand ram) one of the sticks failed on using memtest86 and the other worked, I asked the seller for patial refund he said not to use memtest as it damages ram and said to use the windows one. Anyway, upon trying to reboot and putting the bad ram in to check with windows (as I was exxpecting windows to throw the same error tbh) it went past the stage at wich it failed before. I then decided to test both sticks at once with bad stick in slot 0 and good one in slot 1 and then it through the error. It seems upon further testing it may or may not throw an error with the one stick but will throw an error if both sticks are in use. I moved good stick from slot 1 to slot 3 and the bad stick threw an error again whilstin slot 0. Is this a mother board issue? I had some errors some months ago and I discovered that by shuffling the ram around I got passed all of them.
 
Solution
Memtest86 is the industry standard. Sometimes Windows memtest will fail to pick errors up so it's always desirable to use Memtest86.

Ideally it's usually best to buy RAM in matched pairs.
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So upon running the windows memory checker it said it would display the results upon next log in, however it has presented nothing, anyone know where these are saved? Thanks in advance.

edit I found the results following these instructions

Read Memory Diagnostics Tool Results in Event Viewer in Windows 10

How to Read Memory Diagnostics Tool Results in Event Viewer in Windows 10
www.tenforums.com
 
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So anyway, I ran windows memory test and it passed on both sticks when they were in the first slot and it pased when one was in 0 and the other plugge in as well on slot1, however, the memtest program says it failed with both slots being used. So which is most accurate, windows or memtest?
 
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Memtest86 is the industry standard. Sometimes Windows memtest will fail to pick errors up so it's always desirable to use Memtest86.

Ideally it's usually best to buy RAM in matched pairs.
 
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Solution
well all three sticks are from same manufacture and same specs. The computer hasnt crashed since installation. I do find it strange though the memtest86 said sometimes the ram was fine and at others not. dodgy motherboard?
 
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kemical said:
Memtest86 is the industry standard. Sometimes Windows memtest will fail to pick errors up so it's always desirable to use Memtest86.

Ideally it's usually best to buy RAM in matched pairs.
Click to expand...
I just maxed out the usage of the ram in linux ubuntu and it didn't have any issues. There aren't any programs though are there besides memtest to check ram is ok is there? Ca the motherboard check itself as opposed to just checking the ram?
 
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Why did you initially test the RAM?

Also was the RAM set to XMP or no?

Is the RAM on your motherboards compatibility list? (This can be found on the support page for the mobo itself)

anotherwindowsuser said:
well all three sticks are from same manufacture and same specs
Click to expand...
RAM get's 'paired' in the factory and as i wrote above its usually more ideal to buy in packs of either 2 or 4 ( just so you know for the future, google it and see)

You could of course just try running the machine with the RAM inserted and see how it fares?

anotherwindowsuser said:
There aren't any programs though are there besides memtest to check ram is ok is there?
Click to expand...
I haven't heard of any. Memtest86 has been around for years and the go to app in these circumtstances.
 
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I replaced the ram because the computer cut outon me several times and I ran the memtest86 and it said there were errors in two of the three sticks thus I bought more.

I was not aware there were any settings of any sort for ram?
How would I check this xmp?

Yes definitely on the compatibility list, been using the ram in here for 2 years now since I bought the pc motherboard bundle.
 
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