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Corsair 16gb Ram: cause for concern?

S

shigatashway

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 29, 2011
96
14
I recently took advantage of a sale of 16gb kit of corsair "value select" ram that was posted on this forum that I'm curious if I should send back. Per some people finding that this ram was hit or miss on the quality control, i ran memtest and after a looooooong double pass test, it came out with 0 problems and all the tests passed. Yay!

Then I tested it with Apple's hardware test. It failed after about 5 minutes citing an error of:

4mem/9/40000000: 0x82ca1f18

Google searching it suggested that reseating the ram could fix it, and after doing so it spat out the same error (although with different values after the colon). I also reran memtest after the reseating and it passed through fine.

Apart from this error, I haven't noticed any issues with my computer after installing it, and am just curious if I should contact corsair or amazon for a replacement, or if I shouldn't worry about it unless I actually notice performance issues.

For reference, this is the ram, albeit hosted on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233217
 
Ccrew said:
Quite possible that it's a false positive. It's warranted for life, save the receipt and if it does cause issues RMA it.
Click to expand...

Agreed, it's not inconceivable to get bad RAM, but the feedback is generally immediate if that's the case. If it's working, use it.
 
Um... sorry, but a dedicated memory testing tool is more accurate than "oh it seems to be working".

With 16gb of ram, unless the error is in the small amount of memory the OS + application code will use, you're unlikely to run into an issue on a regular basis. Memory errors in application DATA will more likely cause silent data corruption, uncommon graphical glitch, etc. Unless actual application code is loaded into the area of bad ram (which could be fairly high up in the 16gb range and unlikely to have application code loaded into it), you won't see a crash.

If it fails memory test, send it back before your warranty is up.

It is what the memory test is designed for - to test memory. If it fails the test, it is bad.



Or, keep running it, i don't particularly care either way - but if it was me (been building machines since 1989) i'd be sending it back.


edit:
re-read and it is currently passing tests after a second re-seat? keep an eye on it..... if you get any crashes, particularly if the machine is hot, re-test....
 
This RAM kit is known to be faulty with *Macs*. It will work fine on PC's however, because Mac's are extremely sensitive to RAM.

I've been building PC's for almost 15 years and never thought it would be an issue on my personal late-2011 15" MBP, but it was.

See my thread here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1287539/

Moral of the story. RMA back to NewEgg for a full refund, and pick up 16GB from Crucial.
 
Acejam2k said:
This RAM kit is known to be faulty with *Macs*. It will work fine on PC's however, because Mac's are extremely sensitive to RAM.

Moral of the story. RMA back to NewEgg for a full refund, and pick up 16GB from Crucial.
Click to expand...

You had an issue. A lot of others haven't. I don't see where your thread turned into a pigpile of everyone saying they had a similar experience.

User has not experienced any issues. One program of several flagged an error where others didn't. It's not indicative of a failure and the user can certainly RMA it back even two years from now if it proves to be an issue.
 
Ccrew said:
You had an issue. A lot of others haven't. I don't see where your thread turned into a pigpile of everyone saying they had a similar experience.

User has not experienced any issues. One program of several flagged an error where others didn't. It's not indicative of a failure and the user can certainly RMA it back even two years from now if it proves to be an issue.
Click to expand...

I suggest you do some searching around. Several users have had issues with Corsair's ValueRAM. Unfortunately, people are quick to pull the trigger when they see 16GB RAM kits for a cheap price.

I didn't even receive any errors personally - all of my memory tests passed. However in real-world usage, the machine would freeze, several times. After testing and removing the RAM, the machine was 100% stable.

I suggest brushing up on NewEgg's RMA policy. You can't RMA something 2 years after owning it, you have 30 days. I'm sure Amazon has a similar policy. :rolleyes:
 
Acejam2k said:
I suggest you do some searching around. Several users have had issues with Corsair's ValueRAM. Unfortunately, people are quick to pull the trigger when they see 16GB RAM kits for a cheap price.

I didn't even receive any errors personally - all of my memory tests passed. However in real-world usage, the machine would freeze, several times. After testing and removing the RAM, the machine was 100% stable.

I suggest brushing up on NewEgg's RMA policy. You can't RMA something 2 years after owning it, you have 30 days. I'm sure Amazon has a similar policy. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Yeah after all the stories I'm seeing regarding this RAM being put in macs, I'm going to return it. I was definitely one of those cases where I saw it at a super low price, saw the specs matched what my lappy needed, and jumped at it.

While I'm not seeing any cause for concern in my actual usage, I'd definitely opt to put completely compatible and reliable hardware into a laptop as nice as these are.

Thanks for the input everyone.
 
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