- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
How to test and safely keep using your janky RAM without compromising stability using memtest86+ and the memmap kernel param.
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TLDR - try slowing down “bad” ram
RAM is tricky these days. When you buy “fast” ram - in my case 6200 dominator sticks - what you really are buying is ram that the manufacturer says can be overclocked to 6200 speeds. But this is shady at best. It is entirely possible for that ram to run fine in your rig, and fail miserably in mine - showing itself as errors in memtest. This can be a result of the motherboard or say your cpu - and nothing is broken. Not the chip, not the mobo, not the ram - they just don’t work together at those speeds. Two sticks can work just fine, and then fail when you add two more (for a total of four). I’ve even had sticks that were on the edge, works for a year, and then started giving me trouble.
Most people just RMA those sticks - which I support - if it’s marketed to run at those speeds, then they should run at those speeds everywhere. But if you have “bad” memory laying around that was out of warranty, and given today’s prices - it might be worth pulling them out and trying to run them a little slower. It’s not like you have to take them all the way down to 3200 and turn off the overlock. For example, on many amd rigs, 6000 is the sweet spot. My “bad” stick of 6200 immediately fails a memtest at 6200 (even running that single dimm), but infinitely passes at 6000 (even with 4 sticks plugged in). I can’t even tell the difference between 6200 and 6000.
So ya - try slowing those bad sticks down manually. It might only be a little bit of a performance hit, but at today’s prices, could save you $1000
Lowering frequency is often the right solution and I do mention it in the writeup. I couldn’t find any up-to-date, accurate and accessible info on how to safely keep running with actually faulty DIMMs and it’s not obvious so I thought people might find working instructions helpful.
If you’re still wary of using some old 3200 stick you have and can’t or won’t RMA, please sell it to me instead of binning it :3
TLDR - try slowing down “bad” ram
Bless you. 0% chance I was going to an external blog. I don’t understand how some people still don’t understand what poor taste it is to post links to your own site rather than just creating content here.
You are telling people to break rule 4, which I find a reasonable one: “Don’t duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click”
It’s a static HTML page with no JS. I think telling people that’s unwelcome and that it’s all-in on your platform or GTFO is what is poor taste. Maybe one day my blog will speak native ActivityPub if I bother setting up a non-static hosting for it.
I am not going to rewrite the whole post and have it maybe render poorly in your client due to handling inconsistencies and maybe be gone in 10 years due to platform changes just so you don’t have to click. Just disable JS and image loading in your browser or read it with lynx or sth if you are concerned.
i don’t blame them; until now all social media was under a centralized control that got to own the content and got do with it as they pleased as a a result. (eg reddit).
it’s going to take a while to go back to sharing this content on social media like it used to be and that’s assuming that it will ever go back at all.
Also, check your warranty. I just found some bad ram I bought years ago and thought I was in trouble. Turns out g.skill has a lifetime warranty
Really common, actually. RAM doesn’t really wear out, so if you do get hit with some faulty DIMMS, look into RMAs.
I had some bad g.skill DDR4 last year. I assumed it was out of warranty. Thanks for the tip!
