PC Chips 810LMR Locking Up - Page 3

Scott Tiger · 09-01-2002, 12:37 PM

Well, I learned something.

Thanks for the info Peter, but I'm curious about one thing - You said that one out of three DIMMs that you buy are bad. Are you speaking of Generic memory here. I always buy Crucial but I never test it. Do it just have a good reputation or is it indeed of a higher quality, in your experience?

Peter M · 09-01-2002, 03:36 PM

No matter what it is. I seem to have a better hit rate with genuine Infineon DIMMs (using Infineon chips obviously), but everything else is much worse than it used to be when RAM cost actual money.

Some of the shops here in Germany have extreme low cost "OEM" DIMMs with a huge failure rate. We ripped one of those apart at work, and found that these are actually made from defective, larger SDRAM devices, which get their original branding removed, relabelled with some meaningless numbers that look like a proper device name, selected and put onto special DIMM designs. The one we had combined 16 pcs of 256-MBit SDRAMs to form one 128 MByte DIMM ... meaning three quarters were defective from the start - and needless to say, so was the remaining one.

This is trash recycled for penny savers who then often enough blame everything from Microsoft to VIA and PC-Chips for instabilities but never question the RAM. Embarassingly enough I start finding that stuff in prebuilt systems too.

regards, Peter

Peter M · 09-01-2002, 03:38 PM

btw, Crucial have no market presence here in Europe. So I have no statistics on those, sorry.

The rule of thumb is to at least buy something where the SDRAM chips have an identifiable brand and marking that MATCHES the advertized capacity ... and nonetheless, give every single DIMM you buy a thorough memtest86 grilling in the target system.

GiganticDays · 09-02-2002, 02:20 AM

I take back my apology to PC Chips. I've installed 256Mb Crucial PC133 and while it's slightly more stable, it still locks up around half of the times it boots, only now it doesn't get past drive detection. I've been installing "crappy" generic RAM in ECS K7S5A mobos (another supposedly cheap brand) and had no problems at all.

WBRchris · 09-02-2002, 03:08 AM

It's the PSU.. i know you said you've tested it on another one but trust me on this one.. i had the exact same problems w/ mine those boards are extremely picky about what PSU they'll run on I junked my only PSU and upped it to a 350w antec and haven't had a problem since.. i'm no longer using that board though.. but i did use it for a good while before switching to the soyo dragon plus. for more help w/ that board check the ecs forums over at http://www.ocworkbench.com great resource for just about any mainboard.. but on the whole dfi thing.. i've had dfi boards that sucked so not all are great.. every company has problems.. like it or not.. i'd say about 1 out of every 5 boards are defective from every company.. sure that sounds like a lot.. but truth is the truth.. take visiontek video cards for example almost every one of them had the fan's go bad including mine just recently.. so there's a sour apple in every bunch.. sorry for the long post but i hope it helped somewhat..

Scott Tiger · 09-02-2002, 07:41 AM

No, this has been good - Thanks for the replies...

Although I did not start this thread and don't want to hijack it there's some good information being passed around in here.. Thanks for all the info guys - I'm definitely testing my memory from now on.

GD - I hope things have been working better for now that you've switched the PSU out.

GiganticDays · 09-02-2002, 08:22 AM

Thanks for your support everyone. Basically I decided to dip my toe into the budget PC market and noticed that many are based on this board so I bought 5. The first three have given me problems (whether it be intolerance of generic RAM or PSUs or board faults I doubt I'll find out) so once bitten etc. I'll stick to mid-priced or higher machines from now on. I've had no problems with ECS K7S5A boards so far and I've built loads based on that. Don't know if DDR RAM is generally of better quality than PC100/133 but I use generic RAM in most of my machines (unless specifically asked for branded) and haven't had as many problems in a year as I've had this week with the 810LMR.
Of course it could be the PSUs in the cheap cases I also bought - who can tell, but if you have to buy branded RAM and expensive cases, how do you build a budget pc?

Scott Tiger · 09-02-2002, 08:52 AM

I hear ya GD.. I'm thinking of building myself a new box a couple months but even with the prices as low as they are I'm still looking to spend some money... Unfortunately, it's usually cheaper in the long run to get the good stuff, at least in my experience. I just had a AZZA board on my back up machine die a sudden death last week and really need to replace him if I'm to have any fun testing new OS's..

GiganticDays · 09-13-2002, 12:00 PM

Finally have the definitive answer. It was 10 out of 10 modules of crappy RAM - 100% failure rate! Replaced with RAM of same price (just your bog standard geberic stuff) and have had no problems at all.
Thanks to everyone for their help.

graemetodd · 10-18-2002, 03:25 AM

Having the same problem with 810lmr and athlon XP 1.8.
Tried 2 chips and 2 motherboards, all same as you, keeps locking, blue screens and running very slow. Have you had any success yet.