Anyone else get burned on the gskill shellshocker last week?

So last week Newegg had the sales going on Gskill memory. Like a lot of people I jumped on the deals I wanted. Now I'm sitting here with 4 sets of Gskill ram from those sales , and none of them will even pass 1 full run on Memtest no matter the timings, speed, voltage, or platform I try them in. So far I've tried 2 AMD rigs and 3 Intel setups and the sticks are just outright bad. It makes we wonder if Newegg/Gskill knowingly released bad inventory at cut rate prices last week as almost all the bad reviews that existed for the ram I bought have been removed between the time I ordered my ram and when I got it today. Anyone else have a similar experience with this?

This was my first time buying a Gskill product and IT is definitely going to be my last as well after this experience.

arkan said:

So last week Newegg had the sales going on Gskill memory. Like a lot of people I jumped on the deals I wanted. Now I'm sitting here with 4 sets of Gskill ram from those sales , and none of them will even pass 1 full run on Memtest no matter the timings, speed, voltage, or platform I try them in. So far I've tried 2 AMD rigs and 3 Intel setups and the sticks are just outright bad. It makes we wonder if Newegg/Gskill knowingly released bad inventory at cut rate prices last week as almost all the bad reviews that existed for the ram I bought have been removed between the time I ordered my ram and when I got it today. Anyone else have a similar experience with this?

This was my first time buying a Gskill product and IT is definitely going to be my last as well after this experience.

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that's crazy. none of them passed memtest? i bet they were counting on most people not testing them. are they gonna take them back and refund your money?

Indeed, not a single set will pass memtest. Newegg says they'll replace them. They were kind enough to CHARGE me almost 10 dollars to ship it back to them via UPS after making me wait an entire week to get the package in the first place thanks to "free shipping".

I've had g.skill ram in builds starting with core2 all the way up to sandy bridge and most amd and itel chipsets in between and have never had a kit fail. I very highly doubt they knowingly sold bad kits considering the cost of rma's well outstrips any profit they made with that crazy deal.

Don't be so quick to jump on some sort of conspiracy theory; it just doesn't make good business sense. Or much sense at all really.

i am always skeptical when the have those shellshockers.

hokiealumnus said:

I've had g.skill ram in builds starting with core2 all the way up to sandy bridge and most amd and itel chipsets in between and have never had a kit fail. I very highly doubt they knowingly sold bad kits considering the cost of rma's well outstrips any profit they made with that crazy deal.

Don't be so quick to jump on some sort of conspiracy theory; it just doesn't make good business sense. Or much sense at all really.

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I see what you are saying but past experience, as a retail store owner, has taught me that any company will pass off failed components when it can be financially justified. Nvidia is an example if you look at the 8xxx gpu chipset fiasco. They knew the components were bad and yet kept shipping them anyway for months afterward.

To a normal person such as us this wouldn't be the course of action we would take, but corporations understand that some people will never actually try to return the bad product, especially if they get stuck PAYING to return it for a replacement or refund. You also have to account for the less tech aware consumers, who would have no idea what was going on when their shiny new memory corrupted their hard drive because they didn't know to test it when they received it.

One bad set out of four I could let slide but 8 bad sticks out of 12? Someone obviously slept through QC training upstream and maybe it's just coincidence the bad stock was the same stock they were trying to basically give away at fire sale prices that week, but it's enough to make me consider not doing business with the egg from this point forward (10 bucks to send back a faulty product mighta been the proverbial straw).

I completely unserstand your frustration and it's certainly justified. G.skill does make some good sticks though if you want to give them another chance down the road.

G.Skill is the only brand i have purchased in the last 4 years or so. Just put another set of the 2x4's in my personal and didn't have any problems. I did have to play musical dimm's with the 4 sticks until it found the order it wanted them in though.. But that was more of a MB issue i would imagine.

whether its a good company or not, it all comes down to the decision made by one person in charge. someone along the line realized they messed up these ram sticks and they were willing to risk that most users dont test their ram. best thing to do is write a letter to gskill about it and maybe they can sort this person out.

fundip said:

i am always skeptical when the have those shellshockers.

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I'm not. Yet. The mobo and RAM (G.SKILL) in my sig came as a shell shocker for $75 (free shipping, after $20 MIR) So far I'm pretty happy with the setup. I didn't run Memtest for an extended time but the system is pretty stable (and now crunching Rosetta 24x7.)

I can hardly imagine that Newegg would go along with this unless they could pass the RMA costs along to G.SKILL. It also reflects on their reputation which I believe they have worked hard to maintain. (My contacts with their customer service have all been good.)

Neither can I believe that G.SKILL would knowingly sell defective RAM. Judging by the nominations they've garnering in the "Best RAM Nominations" thread they are a popular brand and I cannot imagine anyone (save perhaps google) who tests components more than folks here. Neither can I imagine they expected deficient RAM to go unnoticed, particularly in this market. I'm pretty sure that hobbyists who put their own computers together remain a small fraction of the entire market and are generally knowledgeable enough to detect bad RAM. And squawk loudly about it. (Of course if they are selling to the big brands like Dell, Lenovo, HP etc. I'm sure those customers would $quawk loudly as well.)

Most likely... Someone in manufacturing or QC probably cut corners and that allowed some sub-par product out the door. Or someone just isn't paying attention. That's too bad as once a reputation is tarnished, it is hard to restore it. I would never ascribe to deviousness that which can be explained by stupidity.

At present I have no immediate need for RAM. Good thing I suppose.

I got this ram sitting on the desk (shell-shocker). I will run mine tonight and report back.

The part that pissed me off is newegg mailed the ram in a freaking bubble envelope.
$150 product in an envelope which they know damn well UPS treats like ****....

Which may be why the product in the OP is failing.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231429

You may be correct about the shipping possibly being at fault. Really thin bubble envelope and not much plastic in the actual packaging from Gskill. It did seem like the packages were suspiciously slow moving the two miles from the post office to my house (5 days seriously from when the package got to my local carrier station) when I kept checking the tracking. I wouldn't be surprised if they were stuck riding around in a mail truck for days before arrival.

Just an update, even with my envelope looking like a steamroller went over it, it survived the trip. I did however write newegg an email expressing my concern about shipping memory, especially $150 memory in an envelope.