White stuff on macbook ram????

[joebells]

Finally got a replacement from apple for my first macbook. I just popped the stock ram to place in 2 1 gig sticks and the factory sticks have this wierd white substance all over them, mainly where the contacts are. Has anyone ever seen this before? It's almost like they were wet as it looks like a water line, like salt water or something. It's not thick or caked on really. In all my years of working on pc's I've never seen anything like this. I have pics but no where to post them.

It was shipped from china and is a week 39 so I don't think its a refurb or anything. It was also already shiny on the topcase where the nub next to the isight comes down and hits it and it also had a light scratch on the topcase right after I opened it.

When does the 14 days run, from ship date or recieve date? I want to bring it into an apple store and hopefully get them to swap it if this white stuff on the ram means anything.

[vega07]

yeah, mine has the white stuff on it too.

I think the substance is from the ram slots.

[Scarlet Fever]

sounds like you were really excited by your MacBook :p

take it back to them. I think i've heard of this before. It's not doing anything now, but its not normal.

[Laslo Panaflex]

I put new RAM in my girlfriends macbook and found the same thing. I believe it is thermal paste that is used on the processor and heat sink that probably spewed out onto the ram slots.

Apple puts lots of thermal paste on their processors and GPU and heatsinks there are numerous threads about it.

[joebells]

its kind of chalky though, not like any thermal paste I've ever used.

[feif]

dude.. ya gotta stop doing blow with your mac opened up.

[mchank]

I think the white powder is ram lubricant; its put on there so that the ram is more easily inserted into those tight slots. I've seen a few laptops from various companies with that stuff on the ram.

[stefan15]

There REALLY should NOT be any sort of "lubricant" or "thermal paste" anywhere on or around the pins of the ram module.....

[joebells]

Yeah I didn't have any such white residue on my first macbook and I've never ever seen such a thing on any memory before

[danalmasy]

-This is a bump for anyone who is curious about this-

After doing a little digging I found a link to an Apple docs page, and they basically state that this IS in fact a lubricant used to make installing RAM easier.

Here's the page:

MacBook White Substance (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304107)

[zepharus]

yeah, mine has the white stuff on it too.

I think the substance is from the ram slots.

semen....

[Surely]

semen....

seamen?

[skyrider007]

seamen?

hahahahhaha love that episode of SP! :D

[Csmitte]

dude.. ya gotta stop doing blow with your mac opened up.

LOL My thoughts exactly, that stuff's expensive

[Yaboze]

My Macbook purchased a week ago had stuff on the RAM module, it looked exactly like the picture linked from Apple's site.

[r6girl]

i was wondering what this was when i noticed it on the OEM RAM when i swapped it for 2x1GB modules. i had half a mind to take it to a genius to see what was up since i wanted to sell the RAM but was worried there was something wrong with it.

[CaptainCaveMann]

Who cares, just plug it in and if it works, don't worry about it!