Memtest86 hangs on 8th test with 65,000+ errors

[Kjacobs]

I've ran the test twice with the same results.

[cbrady]

Looks like a solid memory error. Only fails with test 8, the failures are in the middle of memory and it is repeatable. This is a obscure sort of failure that only shows up with test 8. Interesting.

[Kjacobs]

Looks like a solid memory error. Only fails with test 8, the failures are in the middle of memory and it is repeatable. This is a obscure sort of failure that only shows up with test 8. Interesting.

I ran the test again over night and got the following results:

[David (PassMark)]

Yes, hard to think of any other way to explain this, other than bad RAM.

[Kjacobs]

I installed another set of RAM from Kingston (the previous was corsair) and I am getting similar errors. This seems a little too coincidental to be only the ram that is the issue, could it be something with the ram slots as well?

[cbrady]

These are actually very different errors. The first is a problem that is primarily exposed with test 8 and affecting all of the bits. The second fails with tests 5,6,7 and only affects one bit.

There is no question that these are real memory errors, but why is the question. Like another issue today this is either bad luck with two sets of bad ram, or more likely the MB trying to push the memory beyond it's capability. As you push memory speeds up eventually every DIMM will fail. If it fails at speed at or below it rating it is considered faulty. I don't know what your BOIS setting are or the rated speed of your memory but with the reported BW of 28 GB/s your memory is being pushed pretty hard. I suggest looking at your BIOS setting to find a more conservative memory setting and see how it works. You might want to look at the overclocking section in the Memtest86 manual for more background.

[Kjacobs]

These are actually very different errors. The first is a problem that is primarily exposed with test 8 and affecting all of the bits. The second fails with tests 5,6,7 and only affects one bit.

There is no question that these are real memory errors, but why is the question. Like another issue today this is either bad luck with two sets of bad ram, or more likely the MB trying to push the memory beyond it's capability. As you push memory speeds up eventually every DIMM will fail. If it fails at speed at or below it rating it is considered faulty. I don't know what your BOIS setting are or the rated speed of your memory but with the reported BW of 28 GB/s your memory is being pushed pretty hard. I suggest looking at your BIOS setting to find a more conservative memory setting and see how it works. You might want to look at the overclocking section in the Memtest86 manual for more background.

It's 1866mhz DDR3 ram, so it should be pretty quick I assume. I checked my BIOS and, unless there is a hidden menu somewhere, I can't change any RAM related settings (it's a Sager laptop that I'm running). It's supposed to be plug and play RAM. By looking at these results can you tell if just one stick of ram is the problem or are all the sticks possibly faulty?

[David (PassMark)]

As you have already tested 2 sets of RAM and found errors with both, you should consider other possibilities as well. Might be the motherboard or the sockets or the CPU.

[FastTurtle]

I see lots of people making the same mistake with Intel CPU's - Installing memory that's faster then Intel Supports. Check Intel's site and you will see that the only memory speeds supported are 1066/1333 for any of their CPUs - try dropping the settings down to the default for 1333 speed and see what happens

[David (PassMark)]

Some time after this above post was made we found a bug in Test #8 in V4.2 of MemTest86.
Basically the number of errors can be exaggerated in Test 8. Details are here.
A fix has been included in V4.3

Doesn't change the above conclusion that the hardware was bad however.