I got a set of crucial ballistix ddr3 for my latest build and im pretty sure they are dead, but i'd like to make sure i havent missed anything.
First thing i did was put the 2 sticks in slot 1 and 3 and boot into the windows 7 installer. I installed windows, rebooted several times, and everything worked well. I then started to unzip some large (2, 3gb) 7z files and got a BSOD. That happened twice so i changed to bios settings from Auto (9-9-9-24 @ 1.5v) to 6-6-6-20 @ 1.8v. Still got BSOD. Then i dropped my Ubuntu 9.04 live cd in and ran memtest all night. I got a few errors in the 2800mb area so i took out one stick and got some errors at about 700mb. Makes sense i suppose. Later i started testing each stick in each slot of my mobo, this is where it got weird. Occasionally it wouldnt POST at all, but sometimes it would. If i actually got as far as the test it would either freeze or give me a ton of errors. There was no consistency between test results and test setup.
Should i assume the ram is bad and RMA it?
You can use the vista install disk to do a memory test...this will confirm if the ram is dead, or if the stability issue is coming from something else.
