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Anyone purchase the 4GB OWC memory for Nehalem Mac Pro?

trancepriest

trancepriest

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 9, 2007
270
1
South Florida
Curious to see if anyone else is having any issues with these 4GB sticks? If you did purchase the 4GB sticks can you state what Nehalem Mac Pro you are using it on? I purchased 32GB and had to return it due to ECC errors, modules being reported as empty, modules working then rebooting and some modules showing up as empty, Mac Pro lights flashing on start up with previous working memory. I'm hoping OWC can fix these issues I don't have enough money to pay Crucial 5k for 32GB.
 
Hopefully it was just a bad stick. Before you returned it, did you try narrowing the problem down by trying just 1 stick, then 2, etc?
 
cmaier said:
Hopefully it was just a bad stick. Before you returned it, did you try narrowing the problem down by trying just 1 stick, then 2, etc?
Click to expand...

No it wasn't just one bad stick... it was more like 5. That's why I gave up and shipped em back yesterday for a full refund. I ordered 8 sticks... 3 were messed. Found out that the third one was messed up late in the night while lookign at system profile and noticing ECC errors. The next day I had 2 more replacement sticks. So I place one stick in to 6x4GB... at first it was reported as working. Rebooted and one more stick was showing up as "EMPTY". Tried the other replacement stick and it was just "EMPTY" from the git go. Memory slots were 1,2,3, 5,6,7. The same slots work perfectly with the original Apple 6x1GB sticks.

Screenshot: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3620/3407861958_fe081edc0e_o.png
6x4GB sticks installed into 1,2,3 and 5,6,7... one reported as "Empty" the other has ECC Errors. I gave up after this.
 
trancepriest said:
No it wasn't just one bad stick... it was more like 5. That's why I gave up and shipped em back yesterday for a full refund. I ordered 8 sticks... 3 were messed. Found out that the third one was messed up late in the night while lookign at system profile and noticing ECC errors. The next day I had 2 more replacement sticks. So I place one stick in to 6x4GB... at first it was reported as working. Rebooted and one more stick was showing up as "EMPTY". Tried the other replacement stick and it was just "EMPTY" from the git go. Memory slots were 1,2,3, 5,6,7. The same slots work perfectly with the original Apple 6x1GB sticks.

Screenshot: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3620/3407861958_fe081edc0e_o.png
6x4GB sticks installed into 1,2,3 and 5,6,7... one reported as "Empty" the other has ECC Errors. I gave up after this.
Click to expand...

Disappointing. Those guys are usually pretty good.
 
cmaier said:
Disappointing. Those guys are usually pretty good.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping that they fix any issues with these memory modules. I can't afford 5k of memory from Crucial or Apple. I would order from OWC again if they can assure me that they have a good batch. With so many memory modules non working I can hardly believe that I'm the only one. Then again the issue maybe Mac Pro specific. I was testing on a 8 core 2.93GHz.
 
Did you try moving the bad sticks to other slot to see if the errors followed the stick?
 
JKitterman said:
Did you try moving the bad sticks to other slot to see if the errors followed the stick?
Click to expand...

Yes... sure did. I was testing to see if the slot was messed up or if the sticks were messed up. The "ECC Errors" & "Empty" followed the sticks. I had 8 sticks shipped at first... eliminated the good ones down to 5. The next day I had 2 sticks shipped. I placed one more in... the system appeared to work properly. Rebooted got flashing lights, rebooted again got it to go... but in the OS an "Empty" stick was reported. Took out the new stick and put in the other new one.... same "Empty" problem. Tried resetting PRAM multiple times... still the same issue.

At this point I gave up... i can't be suing a 7 grand system as a guinea pig. Placed in back the original Apple memory... 6x1GB sticks and had no errors at all. No ECC errors, no flashing lights at boot up errors, no empty sticks, etc.

Here's another screenshot with the ECC error being reported in DIMM5: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3586/3404812997_58de38c27c_b.jpg
 
I was directed to this thread following similar problems I was having with OWC 4Gig Ram. Interestingly, no one from OWC has replied to the request for help I sent by e-mail on Sunday... I will be seeking an RMA tomorrow. Have a look at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/693336/ to see how I got around some of the difficulties it was causing.
 
I purchased 4 x 4GB sticks from OWC for use in a new 2009 Quad 2.66. From the start I got an empty slot reported; I managed to isolate the issue to one particular stick which was replaced; everything has been fine since then.
 
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