Blown ram...is it covered?

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daglesj

Supreme [H]ardness
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My brothers PC is equipped with 4GB of Cosair DDR3 ram. Its been running fine since it was built about 2 months ago. However, he was using it a couple of days ago when what only can be described as a 'brown out' happend and the power dipped bigtime in the house.

Since then the PC has been erroring big time. I did some initial tests on the ram as a lot of the errors were ram related and it seems part of the ram has got corrupted/damaged.

Is this something that would be covered by a warranty?
 
It should be. I would submit an RAM request along with error data and get it replaced.

Also, if it fried the RAM, I would also suspect that it fried some other stuff as well.

What power supply are you using? Does it have active PFC? If not, I would seriously thing about investing in a good 80+ with active PFC power supply.
 
daglesj said:
My brothers PC is equipped with 4GB of Cosair DDR3 ram. Its been running fine since it was built about 2 months ago. However, he was using it a couple of days ago when what only can be described as a 'brown out' happend and the power dipped bigtime in the house.

Since then the PC has been erroring big time. I did some initial tests on the ram as a lot of the errors were ram related and it seems part of the ram has got corrupted/damaged.

Is this something that would be covered by a warranty?
Click to expand...

Yes. I believe all corsair rams have lifetime warranty. Submit in a RMA.
 
Cool!

I've done some tests and its one stick thats gone. Memtest goes fully red with about 1600 errors within 3 seconds of the first test. Gets to around 200000 by 2 minutes. I stopped it after that point.

I've taken that stick out and the PC works fine now with just the remaining 2GB (I tested that too).

Played a couple of hours of BF2 and such like on it and it worked perfect.

Will raise an RMA.

Cheers.
 
This is exactly why everyone should have a quality UPS. It's not about keeping your PC on during a power loss, it's about stopping surges and brown outs from damaging your hardware. I will never understand people who have $2,000+ computers, but only invest $3 in a power strip from Dollar General.

I hope the RMA comes through for you OP.
 
The problem is that nothing can protect you from a brown out, unless it has a battery to compensate, or the ability to instantly cut 100% of the power to the device when one is protected. Filters can discharge spikes, but they can't create current.

I once saw a high end rig get completely toasted by an extended brown out, it's not pretty.
 
We have no problem replacing the RAM if it has failed. However, a brown out should not have damaged the memory. What motherboard are you running and have you tested the modules with Memtest 4.10 from www.memtest.org ?
 
Yep tested with the latest version of memtest. The rest of the PC checks out fine. A few runs of Prime95 etc.

He just said that there was a big dip in power in the house (they live out in the country), the lights dimmed and suchlike and after that the PC just went psycho. Errors and long boots, you name it. I got several different errors and issues when I went to look at it. Memtest started errors pretty much as soon as it started the forst test, just racked up more as it went on. I didnt bother doing a full sweep. The other stick did three full sweeps with no issues.

However, RMA all raised and ram in the post! Should it all get sorted we'll be happy corsair customers as ever.
 
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It's also important to know the cutover threshold for your particular UPS; cheaper units may not switch over until the power is actually "out", while others will if the voltage drops below a certain threshold.
 
I think the computer's PSU or even the mobo's memory voltage regulator overshot the voltage.

If Cosair won't cover this, maybe the credit card will because most include 90-day protection against damage and theft, although there are a lot of wierd exception clauses. Also Amex and Visa seem to be much better at handling claims than Mastercard is. Discover started providing coverage about a year ago, but I don't know their practices.
 
Just thought I'd post an update as to what transpired with this ram.

I raised an RMA and posted the ram off to Holland as per instructions. However, due to the place I live only having one Post Office (to improve the service of course) I couldnt get a proof of postage (that involves a 30 minute wait in line) after I'd already spent 20 mins geting the postage sorted.

Yes its that stressful. So I gambled and posted without a recipt. First time I've ever done that.

I kept checking on the website for a few days and it still said "Parts not received!"

This went on for a couple of weeks and my brother was asking about the ram. So I figured the one time I didnt get a recipt I got burned (naturally) so I bit the bullet and bought another 4GB of ram out of my own pocket (more Corsair naturally, XMS3 thanks for asking) and put that in my brothers PC.

He had his PC back and was happy. I kept checking the RMA over the next couple of weeks but it still said "Parts not received!"

Ah well, move on.

Anyway a couple of days later I get an email from Corsair saying they had my ram and would be sending me the new ram in a couple of days. It arrived the next day in fact. Well chuffed!

I checked the RMA and yep........ "Parts not received!" This was just over a month after sending.

So thanks to Corsair for sorting out the ram, appreciate that, but maybe you might like to update your RMA status list occasionally. Could save some stress.
 
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