Memory issues?

I will try to prove all the information possible to help anyone answer this for me.




I only play a handful of PC games. Currently, just Path of Exile and Final Fantasy XIV. (with d3 intended down the road)


I had previously taken a long break from XIV, and recently started playing again. For the past few months I've had intermittent BSOD's. I have all the dumps of those, if anyone needs them, mostly they look like so:

This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x7CC40)
Bugcheck code: 0x3B (0xC000001D, 0xFFFFF80002ED3751, 0xFFFFF88007768BF0, 0x0)
Error: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe


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Anyways. Per the memtest, I guess I just have bad RAM. I have ordered new RAM to replace it. Anyone wish to offer any theories that I'm missing?

Thanks!

-- System Specs:

AMD Athlon II X4 635 Quad-Core CPU- (2.9ghz)
4 GB [2 GB X2] DDR2-1066 PC2 8500 Memory Module-Corsair Dominator
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 – 1GB-Single Card
ASUS M4A785-M -- AMD 785G Hybrid CrossFire Chipset-
700w PSU

The fact that Memtest is showing errors doesn't necessarily mean the RAM is bad. Errors in Memtest can point to any number of issues, which are more often than not caused by one or more incorrectly set BIOS settings, regardless of whether or not any of the "Optimized Defaults" have been changed. Incorrect settings for Vcore, DRAM voltage, DRAM timings, vNB, and others can contribute to unstable RAM.

redduc900 said:

The fact that Memtest is showing errors doesn't necessarily mean the RAM is bad. Errors in Memtest can point to any number of issues, which are more often than not caused by one or more incorrectly set BIOS settings, regardless of whether or not any of the "Optimized Defaults" have been changed. Incorrect settings for Vcore, DRAM voltage, DRAM timings, vNB, and others can contribute to unstable RAM.

Click to expand...

You make a good point. I researched a few of my BSOD codes and a lot of people say that there are problems with the MSX2/3 RAM voltage settings, defaults are seemingly 1.500, and it's said changing it to 1.600 fixes the issues.

I tried that in the BIOS and my machine wouldn't boot up, :/. I get quite worried tinkering with stuff like that, as it stands I only have one PC and I'd rather not blow it to smithereens.

The wort of things you mention as being possibly part of the problem seem like it would be hard to find the problem. There is no way for memtest to actually tell me what the error it found means, I presume?

I would like to note that while probably considered an extreme fail on my part, the pc either came installed in the following way, or I changed it to this at some point.

I have 4 DIMM slots, || || (1, 2, 3, 4)

My RAM was in 3&4.
I tried putting it in 1&2 and hardly got the pc to boot.
Per the manual, it seems (like I typically see in most configurations) it should be in 1 & 3. I have changed it to 1 - 3, as opposed to 3 - 4. Hope it helps :/.

For a dual-channel config., which would be optimal, the modules need to be installed in either the blue or black DIMM slots (A1 and B1 or A2 and B2).