System crash after RAM replacement

[broka]

Hey guy's

I have a brand new imac 2.0 Ghz intel with standard 1gb of RAM. I replaced it with two new sets of 2gb RAM 2 Gb DDR2 PC2-5300 so-dimm of the kingston brand.

After this quicktime is crashing more and more often and today I had a system failure crash 4 times.
I called apple care and they said I may be caused by the new ram.
After I installed the old RAM back the problem was gone.

Now is my question; I do want to upgrade my RAM, what kind of brand should I better use and where to order them?

Many thanks

Teun Pappot ( Amsterdam )

[Duflul]

this has been covered before a couple of times, but here goes.

first run a hardware test (on your install dvd)
if that says one of the ram sticks is bad your problem is solved.
if all is good according to the hardware test, remove one of the sticks of ram and use the computer normally, if it works swap the ram for the other stick and try again. If you get a lot of errors then that is the bad stick of ram.

[nigrunze]

According to MacRumors's guide (http://guides.macrumors.com/Testing_RAM), the Apple Hardware test isn't all that great, but it should probably still be the first test to try.

A better memory testing app for Macs is called Rember (http://www.kelleycomputing.net:16080/rember/). There are two ways to run Rember. Through OSX the normal way or by using single user mode.

1) The easy way in OSX: Run rember just like any other application. Since you're currently running the Mac OS X, lots of memory is currently in use meaning that you can't test it. A better, but slightly more complicated way to test your memory is to use the second method since it uses far less memory.

2) The command line way: This method is a bit scarier since it involves booting into single user mode and using the command line. This process is simplified by putting the Rember application at the root of your hard drive. Hold (Command) + S when you turn on your computer. Type "cd contents/resources". Now type in "./memtest all (passes) (log)". Don't forget the period.

Where I wrote "passes", type in the amount of times that you want the test to run. Where I wrote "log", a log will be written if you type in "-L", otherwise it won't write a log.

The default # of passes is 1, so if you want to quickly run the test without writing a log, you can just type "./ memtest all".

To find the log, in OSX, go to the folder where you stored Rember. Right(control) click Rember and then click "Show Package Contents". Go back to the folder I mentioned earlier and you will find the log named "memtest.log".

[broka]

Thanks for the tips,

I did ran the hardware test and if came out perfect. When I leave the ram out of the computer the system is fine so obviously it is the ram modules that causes the problem.
Is there a site where I can order the original apple ram, I believe this is samsung?

[Duflul]

apple uses all sorts of ram, they just charge more for it.

It might only be one bad stick