The RAM sticks I just bought off eBay

If it's any decent brand it's lifetime warranty little questions asked.

63

Oh wow I didn't know that. They're from Crucial / Micron, also its DDR3L ECC RAM (8GB x 4) so hopefully they'll accept. Thank you for the information!

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- https://www.crucial.com/company/warranty
  
  Looks like it's either a lifetime, or 10-year warranty depending on the model type.
  
  52
- Don't know about Crucial, but Corsair was like that when I needed it a few years ago.
  
  9

Pin D10 tied to a high. Seen that, got my soldering people fix that.

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I'm very curious how you figured that out from the screen shot?

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- Every value is off by the same amount
  
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- They're a fucking wizard that one.
  
  9
- I wrote a RAM test for my system, and had to diagnose quite a few badly soldered boards. I leave the soldering to the specialists, though. All but one still does not understand how I can read "Resolder pin 14 from chip J11" or "Clean short between pins 8 and 9 on chip J14" from such a list.
  
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Computer Jesus has entered the chat

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I feel like a surprising number of people struggle with the meaning of "mildly"...

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They always have

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DDR3 was really hard to find the last time I went shopping for RAM.

I bet you can get at least another 5 more years out of that computer.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/65726/intel-xeon-processor-e3-1275-v2-8m-cache-3-50-ghz.html

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This is actually a new build I just made with a Libreboot motherboard. I'm trying to turn it into a gaming computer, it ran GTA V at 70-80FPS, all high settings, at 1440p. It was working flawlessly, and for some reason now its not I suppose due to the RAM.

But even with this RAM, in the beginning it was working just fine until yesterday I started noticing more stuttering. Vulkan shaders might be interfering, but I did enable them to process in the background and to save the cache but nope, still stuttering.

I was hoping to do a benchmark video for people tonight but I'll have to wait until later next week.

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- Cool. You might check and double check the RAM timings. My machine did not like to run at 1600.
  
  16
- Now this sounds interesting what motherboard did u use might do something like this myself
  
  1
There's 2233 DDR3 vs. 1164 DDR5 RAM on Galaxus (Swiss shop platform). Can't be that hard.

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- The last time I was shopping for RAM was in 2020. I think the supply chain was probably all jacked up from COVID.
  
  I paid $55 for 2ea. 8GB sticks. The price now is $24: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FAY0S08/ref=pe_861660_435879970_fxm_4_0_n_id
  
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This sounds like an interesting story? Any additional details?

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It's pretty silly to blacklist an address. You could just move and now the new owners can't use eBay.

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Red means good, right? Right?

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Well that's really not a surprise since it is old hardware. I would go for something newer as that machine is a space heater. You can pickup used mini PCs or workstations with newer CPUs in them.

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Well, this build is specifically for gaming with Libreboot so due to the limitations with the motherboard I'm stuck using the Xeon processor. Its not bad tbh runs everything well.

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- Assuming you're in the northern hemisphere: For this winter it's fine. It'll gently heat your home while you game like it's 1999. No worries 😁
  
  However, once it starts to warm up you'll want to send that motherboard+RAM+CPU to your local HAZMAT trash pickup/facility and get something newer. Might I suggest a nice 2020-ish desktop CPU? With a motherboard that supports Coreboot, of course!
  
  https://doc.coreboot.org/mainboard/index.html
  
  ...and get yourself a nice Nvidia (sadly, because AMD and Intel are still far behind) GPU with at least 12GB of VRAM so you can have fun with the open source AI stuff (it's a blast!). The more VRAM the better though so if you can pick up a 4060 Ti with 16GB cheap this spring that'll be your best budget buy (endless uncensored fun) 👍
  
  Seriously: If you haven't got the hardware to run Stable Diffusion locally you're missing out! It's as fun and addicting as a really good game. Running it on some cloud service isn't the same because at best they'll be running stuff that's weeks or months out of date (which is like a million years in AI time) and they don't give you the same level of control/possibilities that you get when running your own stuff locally (run whatever models/LoRAs you want, whatever extensions you want, generating images without having to worry about overbearing censorship because it is that bad on public AI services--paid or not!).
  
  4
- Define "everything". Everything installed?
  
  3
All PCs are space heaters, just saying.

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Can build a Sleeper PC with it.

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Your logic isn't sound, it's being "old hardware" doesn't necessarily mean it's reliability is degraded. Not on these time scales anyways.

Quality solid state hardware can continue operating as intended for many decades without degradation.

We really need to get on top of this sort of ewaste/consumerism centered thinking with better education and awareness to the actual reliability of hardware that wasn't built with planned obsolescence.

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- Well the RAM is bad so it apparently didn't last to long. Admittedly it can from eBay but the problem is older hardware is that it pulls extra power and is clunky.
  
  It might be different if we were talking about something lower grade with a lower TDP but this hardware pulls a lot can can be defeated performance wise by a newer CPU that's only a few years old.
  
  2
- Nah that thing is using power like a space heater. The dude above is right, a mini pc for 180 bucks is faster and the power efficiency is not even comparable. Sometimes old stuff is like that; outdated and obsolete.
  
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I have not run the whole test yet, I will do that. Thank you for the advice!

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'intermittent' faults in memory chips is still defective memory.

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F

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F

4

DDR3 is a lot cheaper on Amazon.

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The cost is having to support amazon though.

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- Yeah, it's not like making your life harder is going to kill Amazon, though. My lesbian co-worker and lesbian sister eat chik-fil-a sometimes for the same reason.
  
  7
You don't know what he paid...

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silicon power has had very good prices at azn for 8gb ddr3 dimms for awhile now. cheaper than what i've found anywhere else, even for used stuff or ebay when i've checked there. have several desktops here maxed-out on ram (16 or 32gb) from those.

1

Never buy electronics or related stuff from ebay. Never.

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Hey, at least they tested it.

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I remember testing ram by compiling the Linux kernel. It was so resource intensive that it tended to use every block of memory, so if I was getting weird crashes or something I would just run a kernel build and see if I needed better diagnostics.

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- I found out about 2 months ago I had a dead stick because of my Arch install. I kept having data integrity problems and thought my NVMe was dying. And then the other drive was having the same issues. I had reinstalled Arch so many times during this that I memorized ALL the steps from start to end. I really wish I had tested RAM earlier, but was so determined to believe it was the drives.
  
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- What a creative way to test memory. nice :)
  
  2

Whoops

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Rip

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No, don't rip! Gently remove the bad RAM from the PC.

4