You may not know if your RAM is bad.

I was recently troubleshoot a problem on 1 of 4 computers, the problem being that it would occasionally just freeze, causing me to have to do a hard restart. Eventually I found that 1 of the 2 sticks of RAM in this computer was bad (failed Memtest86), so I replaced the 2 sticks with new RAM. I have also RMAed the one bad stick which the mfg was initially reluctant to do, which is why I bought new. Anyway, this caused me to wonder if I had any other bad RAM, so I tested the 10 sticks in the other 3 computers, and found 3 bad sticks. The computer with 1 bad stick in 4 did blink off occasionally, but I used it quite a bit. One has 2 bad sticks out of 2 and it very rarely malfunctions, but it is lightly used.

So my question is, would having a 33% failure rate be considered unusual? All of this is three to five years old. One difference between all of these computers and normal ones, is that none of them are in a case. Otherwise, they are just plain vanilla running Windows 7-64

Thanks for any comments.

matts6887 said:

Well; i wouldnt say its totally unusual; as ram can become bad even if its not right on the onset of the start of using it. I would just keep an eye on it; and if it still does it you may have to look into the slots on the mb as being a possible culprit or the connector(s) from the ram slots to the mb itself

Well, I have never tested any of it before that I can recall and I have always assumed that new RAM would be good. Today I got back the RAM for one computer which was RMAed and all 4 sticks tested good and are now running.

Is it possible that issues with the mobo or power supply could cause the RAM to fail. Just wondering.

could it be a false positive?

dbtmellis said:

could it be a false positive?

Not sure what you're asking, but the computer that got me started down this rabbit hole was freezing regularly before I replaced the memory stick which tested bad. Actually, I replaced both sticks.