Memory damaged by motherboard?

[Liquid3D]

Here's the scenario. Several months ago my Asus M2N32-SLI began shutting down for no reason at all. After the usual trouble shooting (checking everything) it wasn't frequent enough to cause real concenr, although it was in the back of my mind.

I seemed to recall this problem starting after I installed my Opteron 1212 (BIOS 903) and was testing Super Talent and Crucial ram.

Then about a month ago the board began giving me a lot of trouble with the memory especially the Crucial where I would get memory beep codes and would have remove one or both sticks and place them in DIMMs other then the primary Dual Mode DIMMs.

Yesterday a perfectly fine kit of Mushkin 8500 which clocked to 600MHz on the Opteron Asus M2n32-SLI board malfunctioned. I tested in on my Intel system Asus P5W DH / E6400 and the same thing happened only one stick had failed. I identified the bad stick and Mushkin immediately fixed it so I can finish the review, however; the other good stick is in the M2N32-SLI in the non-Dual Mode DIMMs and seemingly working fine.

I gave the Crucial NBallistix kit to someone and they not only couldn't get it to boot, it seems to have damged one of their motherboards, which won't boot at default settings and had to be RMA'd.

First - I actually have no way of knowing which motherboard may be damging memory and only belive it's the AMD board because of it's shutting down randomly with memory in Dual Mode which usually occurred with Super Talent.

Second - How can I identify which board may be doing this? Any ideas?

I really need some expertise on this PLEASE

[Liquid3D]

I just discovered the clips on the XP2-8500 are metal probably steel and conduct curent. I took the fried stick and placed a magnet to the clip and it stuck.

The M2N32-SLI DIMM for dual channel are so close together just about every type of memory makes contact, certainly the Mushkin does as it's heatspreaders are wider and taller then most fior extra cooling.

Is it possible a short could occur? How well does aluminum carry current?

I am pretty upset about this board and really need something else, the DIMM's are so tight it's probably damaging memory shaving gold off the pins, add that to the proximity of the DIMMs and you have a disaster waiting to happen?

I don't "blame" Mushkin for this if anything what would it take to design in a few extra mm's especially given memory on the ,m=markjet such as Corsair XPert and XMS if this was, or is the AM2 flagship for NVIDIA 590 then they should design with overclockers in mind who might purchase special RAM.

[Liquid3D]

bump

[jamiet757]

computer shutting down randomly sounds like a PSU issue to me, happened twice, and soon after it started I hit the power button to a nice frying electricity sound and a wonderful burning smell, after I recovered from my heart attack and checked, the PSU just burned out a circuit, and had to be replaced

[Liquid3D]

Thank you for replying I really appreciate that. it's not the PSU because it's a fairly new PCPower&Cooling TurboCool 1KW. She's rock stable I already tested voltages with multimeter.

But I am grateful for your help.

[Gothic]

Have you had this issue with naked (no heatspreader) dimms?

[Liquid3D]

No but let me re-cap by printing an email from someone I'd sent the Crucial Ballistix to which started this.

Irecall my Opteron rig having random shut-downs sometime shortly after buying an Opteron 1212 which replaced my 3800X2 a great CPU which OC'd to 300FSB at 1.320Vcore (deafult). The Asus M2N32-SLI couldn't support Opterons until a few months ago when BIOS 903 arrived.

As I said shortly after installing the Opty errors and shut downs occurred but not that frequently. In testing DDR2 1000 I have to increase the FSB to 250. But it was stable 99% of the time. I did have some problems with "Beebs of Death" when changing settings on the Crucial and with the Super Talent this occurred on both boards. I didn't record every event so it's tough to remember because I was switching between kits so often to complete a review featuring both DDR2-1000 kits.

After finding the Crucial was stable in Orthos on both rigs I came to the conclusion the memory was fine and I sent it to someone. Thgis is what happened when he got it;

"I tried that ram in 2 different DFI mobo,s. The first being the DFI Infinity 975x/g which at the time was running 2 sticks of OCZ. The system just produced long beeps. I cleared cmos and restarted and again just long beeps. Removed your ram replaced the OCZ system restarted. I then placed the ram in a DFI Infinnnity 965-S and the system strated but got to boot screen where amount of memory is tested and it would drag. Shut down and cleared cmos a number of times. After a hour of trying, I ffinally got the system to run memtest from disc in cdrom. It failed instantly. Tried several times, only to get same results. This mobo had been running Patriot ram. I replaced my Patriot ram back in system only to have the system get to desktop and reboot, not matter what I tried system would not run. I raised vcore, vdimm nothing solved the problem. This is the mobo being RMAed. It ran ffine before installing The CB ram...I even tried it in a ASUS P5WD2 mobo just to see if it was a issue with DFI and that system would not start. I placed the Patriot ram in it and the system started...clearing cmos did not get that ram to run in 3 different mobos..."

He shipped the memory back to me immediately. not only have I reimbused him I also offered to pay any expenses including his having to ship the board he said was damaged and any other expenses incurred from damge the "memory did".

Now without the memory two days ago I began mem-testing the Asus M2N32-SLI in the dual channel clots where I would get beebs and no post, but after palcing a single stick in one of the other slots it would boot. I ran mem-test on that slot no errors, it was a kit of Super Talent, then ran the mem-test on the primary dual channel slots for 33-passes seen below;

http://www.ocforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=56938&stc=1&d=1178277655

The Crucial Ballistix kit in question then arrived yesteday and I tested IT in the Intel system first as the test above was still running. That was the Asus P5W DH (BIOS 1901) I had no problems with the kit taking out of the shipping box and plugging it right in, it ran fine I did some tests amnd then ram mem-test for 42-passes without an error seen below;

http://www.ocforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=56973&stc=1&d=1178406562

Now if the M2N32-SLI board's dual channel DIMMs were defective why wouildn't they create errors with Super Talent memory? His tests began erroring immdiately? And thi is in no way criticizing the person I sent the memory to, as far as I'm concered his rep is good.

And now this after one hour testring on the M2N32-SLI proving what? There's obviously a problem with the memory on the M2N and one thing I also forgot was to test the memoryu at speed on the P5W DH it was only running at 700MHz and reduced voltage 2.1V. below it's running at SPD, 1000MHz and 2.2V. One trhing for sure, the safest thing would be to RMA the kit, RMA the M2N32-SLI and RMA the Opteron 1212 which may have the been ewither the cuase or have been affected by the memory with it's on-die mem controller?

http://www.ocforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=56980&stc=1&d=1178412992