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Crucial's time has come and gone. I use to use only Crucial memory in my systems but not anymore. 3 out of the last 4 sticks of memory I got from Crucial have died. The quality just isn't there anymore. Soon as I can find a good deal on Corsair or OCZ memory I'm going to toss the Crucial stuff and get something more reliable.

Even for $20 it's not worth the time and effort of RMA after RMA with this stuff.

#1, I'd suggest you re-evaluate your methods of installing your memory sticks. Your problems with Crucial are obviously due to user error and have nothing to do with Crucial making bad memory. Now, I hope you listen to me and make that your last post badmouthing Crucial as I, and other members at Ben's, are sick of reading your crapping on Crucial.

#2, You're right, I guess I should stop licking my dimms before installing them, you're oh so helpful. If you were to actually do some research before attempting to flame somebody you'd see that Crucial memory is getting bad customer reviews all over the web right now. Crucial dimms have an average time to failure of about 2 months right now and there is no signs of it getting any better. People are reporting that they are on their 2nd and 3rd replacement from Crucial and they keep crapping out.

Thanks for wasting everybody's time with your post #2, it was very insightful.

#3, thanks for wasting everybody's time with your constant bad reviews on Crucial RAM. How long did it take you to create all those different accounts and write all those reviews on different websites to trash Crucial?

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I agree with #1 that Crucial memory sometimes has the problem with its quantity. I actually bought 20 pairs of Crucial DDR2 memory ( for desktop as well as laptop), and I had to return for replacement 2 of them. I can say Crucial is one of the best CS I've seen so far (rebates as well as Tech support). All Crucial memory has LIFETIME warranty, so don't worry too much if you get bad one unluckily. For the price as well as the ability to overclock, you can't beat it.

Same here #5. I've built hundreds of machines, and have rarely had issues with memory. I can only think of two times. I am using four sticks of this memory in my computer with no problems yet.

With that said, I'm getting a little hesitant about Crucial considering all the negative reviews. I'm hoping it doesn't give me any trouble.

#7, you can be sure that 90% of the people only write reviews when they are upset. Which probably means that 95% of reviews written by consumers for any given product are going to be negative. Most people, when completely satisfied with their purchases, don't take the time to write a review talking about their positive experience. It's human nature... we take things for granted when they "go the way it should," but go all crazy and start badmouthing products and companies as soon as we have one thing that goes wrong.

The fact of the matter is you are going to get good parts or bad parts no matter what brand/company you buy from. This goes for TVs, harddrives, RAM, DVD players/drives, etc. Some companies do tend to produce less than quality stuff the majority of the time, but this is rare. The norm is companies putting out long lasting, quality products but they have a few bad batches. You can't get it right 100% of the time. Not everyone can be Sony.

I to have been building machines for myself and others for years. I use to swear by Crucial memory and used it in all my machines. I probably had only 1 or 2 bad sticks out of 100 until recently. It wasn't until this year that I've started having problems with Crucial. I thought I'd just pass on my experiences to try and help others to avoid a potentially bad situation. If some people are more interested in just ripping down others they oh well, nothing to be done about that.

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HAHA! Damnit bacon, you aren't supposed to give away our secrets. Oh well, I guess the cat is outta the bag now.

I've bought 5 kits of Crucial memory in recent history. Of the 5 kits, I've had to send in 3 modules for RMA. The one Patriot kit I've gotten recently had a bad module. Two of the last 4 Corsair kits I've bought needed an RMA. Since only 1 module per kit was bad, I figure I'm running in the 20%-ish neighborhood for bad modules. I'm seeing it as a wider occurrence across the industry. I do ground myself before properly handling the memory ... since with a 20% rate, I'd also assume I was the 'common denominator'... but it sounds like I'm not the only one...

I think its a combination of the huge density of memory nowadays along with the fact that since I was made aware of MemTest86 and Prime95, etc, I rigorously validate my memory after receiving it. Its easier for 1 bad cell out of 1 billion to sneak past normal testing, but I'll run the burn-in tests long enough to find them if they're there...

Its possible that if I just used the RAM like normal, I'd maybe have one unexplained reboot every few months ...

It hasn't been my experience, like #3, that the memory fails after several months of apparently solid service. Once I benchtest the modules and determine they're solid, I haven't had any problems. Its not to say it doesn't happen, that just hasn't been my experience.

I'm much like Slinger2112. I've built lots of machines over the years and I've never had RAM "die" on me before. If it passes memtest it works forever, and if it doesn't pass I RMA it for one that does.

The only issue I ever had was 10 years ago when I built my first computer and bought generic RAM. I was running Windows 98 and decided to upgrade to 2000 when it came out, yet every time 2000 loaded I would quickly get a fatal memory error (but never an error during installation). For some reason this RAM that had run perfectly fine with Windows 98 for two years refused to play with Windows 2000. I swapped in another stick and it worked fine. Back then I didn't know about memtest, but nowadays I always run it on all of my RAM.

I also have a motherboard that will fail a memtest each time I fill all 4 slots (regardless of what's in the 4th slot) so, I just use 3 slots. Weird things happen.

As #8 said, there will always be bad hardware no matter what you buy or who you buy it from, but an increase in complaints for Crucial probably means they're either selling more volume (and thus have the same % complaining as always) or they're having more quality control problems than normal. So depending on which is the case, more complaints may not necessarily be a bad thing.

I agree the quality of crucial memory has gone down recently. First time ive ever had a problem with them was on a recent build.