Crucial Ballistix keeps failing on me

toss me on the list, just RMA'd my 2x 1GB kit PC-6400. Had a fan on directly on them too, ran at stock voltages. bad luck i guess /=
 
Hmmm. I wish I saw this thread when I ordered my 4GB Ballistix set last April.

My machine has been increasingly flaky since installing these. I went off on a wild goose chase trying to troubleshoot the blue screen issues because they passed memtest. I reconsidered the memory as a cause when I kept getting PFN_list_corrupt errors. Vista memory diagnostics tool picked up the problem and I eventually identified the bad stick.

Crucial CS was very accommodating and agreed to cross ship. She told me that they had "compatability" problems with the Ballistix early in the year and that they have been revised. Old model number ended with 804. The new revision ends with 80A. She also mentioned that the new revision runs at a lower voltage, so the comments about 2.2v may be right on.
 
I drive my crucial ballistix ddr3-2000 below spec at a minimal voltage that they work at. 1.825v instead of the rated 1.9v. 1750MHz
 
I agree with Duckman-

Sometimes my system wouldn't POST after a cold boot (but POST went just fine after warm reboot.) Found out it was a bad stick of RAM.

Called Crucial yesterday to RMA 1 bad stick (DDR2 6400, M# ending 804) and told the technical rep I have the Gigabyte P35-DS3L and he stopped and said "There we go. We have had a ton of issues with this chipset/motherboard." the rep also mentioned what Duckman said about the new revision (M# ending 80A) with lower voltages.

One thing they have right is the Customer Service. Cross-shipping and free shipping back and forth is pretty cool. Oh yeah, since this is my third warranty claim, I asked if they would give me 2x2gb instead of 4x1gb sticks and they said they would.
 
i have one open RMA for a truly defective stick and waiting on approval as the rep that contacted me told me to open another to exchange my 3 remaining good sticks because the replacements they're sending out are all the new 2.0v stuff...

mine we PC8500 DDR2 1066 5-5-5-15-2T 2.2v and also flaky as hell unless only 1 stick was ran in a system and below spec at that...it is not the motherboard or any other component as i have recently switched to GSKILL PC8500 5-5-5-15-2T 2.0v memory and am having zero issues...
 
This will definitely be my last time as well, Absinthe. After 3 RMA's, it's time to pay a little extra and get a quality brand for the next round.
 
I have a Maximus Formula SE and I've run into dying RAM issues as well. It killed one of the sticks in my 4GB Patriot Viper PC6400 kit. Then it killed a stick from my 2GB OCZ Reaper PC8500 kit. Both were (very) mildly overclocked with a Q9450. Luckily, Patriot RMAed the viper, but the OCZ is still out.
 
My Mushkin memory is coming in the mail tomorrow and I will officially be free of this crucial mess. Never will I buy from them again. I tried so hard on the phone to get them to send me double sided memories and the guy on the phone kept telling me it's not possible for them to do that since the inventory is random. He also was thoroughly convinced my ram died because I didn't set the timing/voltage correctly (which I did). I get the new memory back and 3 weeks later: BSOD. I had to save constantly while doing a Photoshop project for school. What a nightmare.
 
I had 2 pairs of these running at ddr2 800 1.8v and they still died. Just something wrong with them in general.

Does anyone know if the DDR3 Tracer stuff dies the same way?
 
Aw crap. My Ballistix just failed on me again today. This is either the 3rd or 4th time with these dimms. Pisses me off.
 
I have mixed feelings on Crucial since I had my own Ballistix issues. RMAed once, died again, ended up putting a new system with Corsair RAM. Liked the Dominators a lot so I went Corsair again on my new system. Pity, I liked Crucial, but I look elsewhere now.
 
Sojuuk said:
I had 2 pairs of these running at ddr2 800 1.8v and they still died. Just something wrong with them in general.

Does anyone know if the DDR3 Tracer stuff dies the same way?
Click to expand...

Nah mine are fine. It's the older dual channel ones that suck balls.
These use Samsung modules at lower volts i.e. 1.5-1.65. 1.8v IMO is too hot for the LEDs on the pcb.
 
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People are still buying these? I thought after the DDR1 days people would've learned their lesson.

For amusement, awhile ago I booted up my old Pentium 4 machine that was on its second set of DDR1 Ballistix. Yeah, one stick was bad, so it was either starting to fail before I built my X2 machine or it failed in its short recent use. After my first set failed, I was even running them at below rated speeds. Obviously not worth RMA'ing at this point. I would never recommend or purchase Ballistix.

There are currently 4 desktops running in my household. Two with G Skill, one with Mushkin, one with Corsair. Haven't had any issues with any of them. In fact, the only RAM I can recall ever RMA'ing is Ballistix, and while I'm not constantly playing around with new RAM sets, I've been through my share (including non-Ballastix Crucial, which worked fine).
 
i've just started to get intermittent c1 post errors on my ip35 pro. the first was last friday, the second today. the general consensus is that this is a ram problem. i have the dual channel 2 x 1gb bl12864aa804.16fd3 ballistix.

i've had them running at spec timings and volts for around a year and a half 4-4-4-12 2.2v. most posts i've seen on here say that the 2.2v is too high even though it was the recommended setting and that this was probably contributing to the failure rate.

i've dropped the volts to 2.0 today in the hope that this might stabilize them. and will be running memtest overnight for the next few evenings. are they inevitably going to fail now or have i caught the problem in time?

do i have to wait for the sticks to fail totally before i can rma? and in the meantime have my files potentially corrupted.
 
I'm baffled that people are still dealing with this. I'll throw in my story just to add to the greater discussion..

I bought a 2x1GB set about a year ago and they were fine in my computer for a couple months, then the computer started crashing. It usually took some time to crash rather immediately or at random times.

I did look into reviews and saw others having the same issues. I did an RMA and asked the service representative if they could guarantee me a working set based on what Newegg reviewers figured out was a working batch. They wouldn't acknowledge any sort of defect and send me the RMA.

I put this new set in and I got the same results. I found out about memtest at this point and, because I didn't want to put my computer out, ran the memory through it on my brother's computer. I saw no problems and decided to just give it to my brother. He had no problems and still has no problems to this date. He's got an nForce 650i board and I had a P35.
 
Slip Digby said:
i've just started to get intermittent c1 post errors on my ip35 pro. the first was last friday, the second today. the general consensus is that this is a ram problem. i have the dual channel 2 x 1gb bl12864aa804.16fd3 ballistix.

i've had them running at spec timings and volts for around a year and a half 4-4-4-12 2.2v. most posts i've seen on here say that the 2.2v is too high even though it was the recommended setting and that this was probably contributing to the failure rate.

i've dropped the volts to 2.0 today in the hope that this might stabilize them. and will be running memtest overnight for the next few evenings. are they inevitably going to fail now or have i caught the problem in time?

do i have to wait for the sticks to fail totally before i can rma? and in the meantime have my files potentially corrupted.
Click to expand...

I doubt reducing the voltage will help, It didn't help me. Relaxing the timings eliminated the errors though. Removing one stick also reduced the errors, and I had fewer errors in one pair of slots on the MB as compared to the other.

Those are the temporary solutions I found. If you can show that the errors are caused by the memory running at advertised timings, they should take them back. I doubt the sticks will completely fail over time.

One more note. Memtest did not reveal the errors for me, so it took me a long time to figure out the problem. However, Vista's memory test failed every time.
 
cheers, dduckman. i just got repeating c1 post's this morning on 2v. on 2.2v i'd just get one c1 which would miraculously disappear once i switched it off and back on at the mains. tried each stick individually one was fine the other wouldn't work at all.

so i went to aria this afternoon and bought a coupla gigs of corsair xms2 as a replacement.

i'll have to slap the crucials in a test rig and mess with them a bit before i can definitely rma, i expect. i use this setup for work so can't be doing with the downtime and potential problems of bad ram corrupting my files.

are the newer 2v ballistix any good? i'm assuming crucial would swap mine for them as the 2.2v ones seem to have been phased out.
 
The newer 2v ballistix ARE GARBAGE and will die just as fast due ti heat and will NEVER OC as well as the old ones with the clips ontop. My old ones did 4-4-4-4 @500fsb 2.2v
 
Slip Digby said:
are the newer 2v ballistix any good? i'm assuming crucial would swap mine for them as the 2.2v ones seem to have been phased out.
Click to expand...

The new ones were definitely better. I had no real problems with mine, but I did not test their limits.
 
i just rma'd 2 sets of 1gbx2 ddr1 ballistic tracers. They die so fast even stock voltages. I think thats why they discontinued it. I traded them in just for regular 2 sets of 1gbx2 3200 sticks. Crucial performance ram lost my confidence after those ballistic tracers. Mushkin and Gskill never gave me problems so far in ddr2. I recommend Redline Mushkin ram for high performance over ballistics any time.
 
yup i ran in the same case and have rma's my ballistix tracers twice already along with an rma for my mobo. I don't think ballistix d9's and the badaxes work too well..btw this thread is old and dirt.
 
There's a couple of Ballistix kits on sale at Newegg now, am I crazy for even thinking about buying them?

I currently have 2x1gb Crucial Ballistix from 2-3 years ago with the D9 chips and they've been great.

However, I recently upgraded to Win7 64-bit and would like to add some more RAM. I want to be able to keep the current RAM I have and just add some more for a total of 6gb. They recent newegg reviews of both the Tracers and regular Ballistix are awful.

Will some G.Skill sticks be compatible with my Crucial sticks? Or should I just scrap the Crucial and start over?
 
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