Crucial Technology Ballistix 2GB PC2-6400

I use to be a fan of Crucial memory and used it all the machines I built. Recently Crucial have been putting out some bad memory. Lots of people are reporting high failure rates and BSODs after a couple of months of using this stuff at or below advertised specs. I am in the process of RMA'ing of the pieces I got that went bad after just a couple of weeks. Guess I'll go back to buying Corsair memory from now on.

would memtest86+ reveal anything? How long would you have to run memtest86+ before defects show up?

Thanks.

I don't think I can resist this price. $16 for 2GB of high speed DDR2 ram with the fast timings...

Well, I'd say widespread DDR3 adoption is a very, very long way away, as long as these prices keep up.

#3, why resist? I picked up 2 sets of these recently, one at $15 and one at $19 AR. This is almost dirt cheap..as long as the memory works, of course.

After I knew which piece of memory was bad I ran memtest86+ for a couple of hours without any errors showing up.

#2, I typically hear that if memtest86+ can make at least 3 passes, you're probably good. If I'm on a customer site, I'll be happy with 2. If you have the luxury of letting it run overnight without failures, you're going to be solid.

However, the one time I've seen Memtest miss a problem was, surprise, Vista 64 related. I had a MT86 stable platform, but were getting Windows Update failures in Vista 64. Vista's Memory Test (reached by booting from Vista CD alternate startup option). My guess is that Memtest is 32-bit and Vista's test may be 64-bit. Perhaps a 64-bit MT86 would have caught that issue, but that's still under development (maybe...). I RMA'd the memory and its worked since (the sticks were Patriot BTW).

I still fully trust MT86, but do the Vista test on 'extended' if its a Vista system just to make sure...

prime95. If any part of your system is suspect, this puppy will likely cause it to fail.

Probably should up the voltage for these. That might be why some people are experiencing problems. I have the 8500, and I think it is spec'ed for 2.1V.

The ones that failed for me failed even at higher voltages than spec'd, and even at slower speeds and timings. One stick worked ok with high voltage and lower speed - yeah, glad I paid extra for the 8500 to run overvolted at 533. No overclocking, just plain bad ram several times.

I'm RMAing 2 sticks of these that want bad after a year.

bad memory

I will never buy crucial memory

Anyone know if these will work in my Dell Dimension 9200? using 2Gig (2x1gb) 5300 667 - I'd like to use them together to make 4GB, I have 2 empty slots.

I'm about to RMA a set of these. They worked fine for 6 months, but they now fail memtest86+. Picked up the OCZ PC2-8500 at frys.com and they have been running great.

Gee, seeing all these complaints of failure, I now regret that I had just ordered one. It might be worse than I originally thought. I thought these might be OK working at lower PC2-5300 timings and voltages.

this ram sucks. had 3 of 4 sticks go bad after 6 months. search for past posting of this stuff and you'll find bad news all over this product.

This memory is total crap. Fails memtest86+ and Super Pi each and every test. I have 4 GB (4 x 1GB) and they fail using one two or four GB's. There is a reason this stuff is so cheap...Many brainless users will never know but a quick test will confirm this bad review

#12 - look up your computer at Crucial's website. It will tell you if this is compatible. Buy this with the expectation that it will fail in 6 months to a year. Crucial will replace it, but that will take several weeks. This stuff runs very hot and seems to self-destruct from the heat.

sold out...

#16, not to single you out, but there's also a reason this stuff has a lifetime warranty on it ... so you can take advantage of it ...

Of the 4 sticks of the 1GB Ballistix I've received, I did get a bad one. They quickly accepted my RMA and I've been running solid ever since.

Maybe its because there are great stability utilities like Memtest, Prime95 and Super Pi, but I have been finding that about 30% of the initial RAM shipments I've been getting lately have been showing up with issues. In the past, we probably just had buggy systems we never pinned on the memory. Crucial, Corsair, and Patriot (all non-value models) have been the brands I've been trying lately (note that all carry lifetime warranty), and I've gotten a bad stick for each one.

They've stood behind their warranties, but its just unfortunate that we need to be the final product tester for the memory companies...

wtf. so much complaints, still sold out. wtf.

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