Smoking Memory Riser - Help!

Get on the phone to both apple and Cruical.

However if it where me i'd tell apple that it was their ram in that slot and get them to advise.

 

I'm wondering if it isnt just gunk/residue on the heat spreader with a low vapor temp.

 

I would bring it to an Apple store and let a genius look at it. Make sure you leave only the Apple memory in there when you go. Tell them what happened and let them run the machine for a while to test it out (at least an hour or two). Go get dinner or lunch or something, shop around, etc. Then go back to the store.

It'll either be fine and there will be no issues, or they'll maybe replace the riser(s) for the memory if it starts smoking again.

 

Now you've let all the smoke out you know it is not going to work anymore...

 

This man speaks the truth, electronics run on the magic smoke, once its gone, you're out of luck.

In all seriousness though, I wouldn't put that thing back in the Mac Pro and power it on. If it let smoke out I wouldn't risk it taking out anything else, like the motherboard.

 

The issue here is that the crucial memory doesn't support reading the temp of the FB-DIMMs. Not many 3rd Party FB-DIMMs do support this. The EFI will monitor the thermal conditions of the FB-DIMMs and the current supply to them. When it detects a DIMM is failing, it's supposed to move the data out of the DIMM, relocate it and power off the DIMM, reporting the error to the OS.

My concern would be that the EFI allowed the riser to overheat to start with. That would lead me to think it's a failure of the riser, failing to report an over-current / overheat condition.

The other issue is if the 3rd party dimms were rated to be used in a Mac Pro. SHouldn't matter that much, but you never know.

If it was a failure of the DIMM, a dead short or something, then it's going to come down to the warranty agreement. The odds are that it expressly excludes damage to the equipment it's installed into.

Bottom line, an engineer will be able to tell what the cause was. Weather otr not Apple puts an engineer on the case is how much they feel that this is a legal risk to them.

 

Glad to see it got worked out for you. I've had Crucial memory in my Mac Pro since the day I got it (April '07). I never even booted it before I stuck the extra RAM in it. Crucial guarantees their stuff forever, so if it doesn't work just call them up and get new sticks. Heck, they might even replace them because the memory riser went up in smoke.

 

I actually run 8GB (8x1GB) or Dell memory... I've never had any issues with it, other than the system not being able to read the thermal monitors on them.

I would personally contact the manufacture and have them replace it. It should have a lifetime warranty.