High failure rate on Mushkin Redline 99x057?

[Zoson]

I bought two kits of 999057, several months ago and they came with the dark green, almost black PCB. The printing on the circuit board is "Levin ####"(four digits). After about a week, one of the six sticks failed and I sent it back to Mushkin.

They replaced the stick no questions asked, but the replacement they sent me was DOA. I also noticed that it was 992057 and had the usual Mushkin light green PCB. Mushkin again replaced this stick no questions asked, and sent another 992057(which works so far).

I then bought some 994057 for my HTPC gaming rig. These sticks came with the light green PCB. So, I checked the printing on the edges of the circuit board to find that the light green PCB is in fact the same PCB that Mushkin had been using for awhile now. It's the same PCB as on some 998953 I had before, and some 998970 redline I have on-hand.

Eventually, after about a month, all of the remaining sticks of 999057 with the dark green PCB failed. Every stick started throwing memory errors in memtest, or wouldn't detect on POST. As they failed I would pull and replace with the 994057, or 998970.

Mushkin replaced all 5 of the sticks again, I did them all at once. They sent me a kit of 999057 with the dark green PCB back, and a kit of 997057 with the light green PCB.

About a week later, one of the 999057 replacements failed. For anyone not keeping count, that's 7 of 9 999057 sticks I got with the dark green PCB. Seeings as all 6 of the black PCB sticks had failed previously, I sent the entire kit of 999057 back and asked for replacements that were on the light green PCB, the one I had been working with for the last few years and haven't had issues with. They agreed, and now while I've waited on the replacements, one of the 997057 has failed.

Now, the rig is the one in my sig... Before people start screaming 'your motherboard is killing your memory!' I've had this motherboard for three years, and ran it with the 998953 sticks I mentioned earlier from the day I bought it. I later picked up the 998970 used here on the forums, and dropped that in alongside my 998953, and ran 18GB for about a year. I found that I still needed more ram so I got the 999057 sticks, and I sold the 998953 right after I got the 999057 kits(before any failed).

There's been no specific socket causing memory to go bad. I couldn't believe that suddenly my motherboard was killing sticks in every socket. So, I inspected the sockets carefully with an x30 magnifying glass, half expecting to see something wrong, but it was just a uniform set of contacts on both sides of sockets.

I'm thinking about asking them to send me something with different IC's on them... I've never overvolted them, or undervolted... Hell, I've never run this motherboard at anything other than 1.65v DDR3.

Most importantly though... I'm thinking that if I'm seeing this kind of failure there must be others having similar issues. Bueller? Bueller?

Cliffs:
Got 2 kits of 999057 (6x4GB 1600mhz 1.65v 7-7-7-24) to upgrade from 998953 + 998970.
7 of 9 999057 failed
1 failed 992057
1 failed 997057
999057 has a different dark green PCB than 992057,994057,997057, 998953, and 998970.
It's not the motherboard.
Never overvolted or undervolted.
Anyone else having issues with these kits?

 

[drescherjm]

1.65V is technically overvolted since the JDEC standard voltage for DDR3 is 1.5V.

 

[Zoson]

Right, but the memory is rated for 1.65v.

 

[baldrik]

Right, but the memory is rated for 1.65v.

But your memory controller isn't. Are you testing them with the CPU overclocked? Have you tried them in another machine?

 

[Zoson]

But your memory controller isn't. Are you testing them with the CPU overclocked? Have you tried them in another machine?

Actually, 1.65v is the max safe spec for my CPU. Did you read above that it's fine with other modules, and has run fine for 3 years?

Also, yes I tested the sticks on the SB-E HTPC and at 1333. New sticks of 99x057 work fine, but fail shortly.

Edit:
The ram is 1600mhz 7-7-7-24-1T 1.65v, I have it actually running at 1600mhz 8-8-8-27-1T 1.5v now. Made this switch the other night when I noticed that most everything else mushkin sells with these IC's are 1.5v spec. Including the equivalent triple redline kit at 1866mhz 9-9-9-27(part 999052).