dalegtr18 Posted July 27, 2006 Share Posted July 27, 2006 I have an HP Pavillion 751n 1.8Ghz processor that takes either PC1600 or PC2100 DDR memory on an Asus P4S-LA motherboard. I recently put in two 512MB PC2700 chips that I salvaged out of a Dell Optiplex. My belief regarding memory speed is that the extra speed is completely wasted on a board that won't handle memory that fast but is not harmful or incompatible. As I got the chips for free I wasn't worried about any waste of money so I popped the chips in about 4 months ago and everything has been fine. Well, last weekend I was doing some complete maintenance/upkeep on all of my pcs- defrag, scandisk, hard drive testing and finally memory chip testing with Memtest86 v.3.2. I got tons of errors on the chips and even went back and tested them alone and in both of the memory slots. I still came up with errors no matter how I tested and figured that both chips were bad. I tried to find some PC2100 1GB chips with no luck so went with a PC2700 chip. I got online with HP and the tech told me he highly recommended PC2100 chips, tho at least he didn't try to sell me strictly on "only HP memory" for which I was thankful. So, my question is this- are the PC2700 chips OK in my system and are the errors invalid or do I really have to get PC2100 chips? I am not very knowledgable regarding memory testing software and have considered using another program. Are the errors generated simply because of the mismatch in speed? I'd hate to use incompatible or bad chips and regret it later. Any know for sure?? Thanks much in advance.Dale Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greengeek Posted July 27, 2006 Share Posted July 27, 2006 If you're not having any problems I wouldn't worry about it. I have four and five year old RAM in some of my computers that never passed any memory test but have been working fine all this time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzButt Posted July 27, 2006 Share Posted July 27, 2006 About the only issue I came come up with is the chips need to be the right configuration for your baord. For instance many Dell's I have worked on require single sided chips.Maybe you can test the 700's in another PC to see if they are good in there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dalegtr18 Posted July 27, 2006 Author Share Posted July 27, 2006 Thanks Greengeek. I am leaning toward that but it's always nice to have that warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing everything is ok rather than hoping. :-)Good idea fuzzbutt- it would be ideal to test them on another pc- especially one meant for PC2700. Unfortunately none of my other pcs take DDR ram. Maybe I can get my hands on one to test it. Didn't think of this one but if it does check out ok then I can feel good about the memory chips. Still, I wonder if the HP board will have problems with it and what does it say about the memtest86 errors?Dale Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 27, 2006 Share Posted July 27, 2006 If you are worried about data integretiy, perhaps install Prime95 and run the torture test. It will report any memory errors the hardware may throw up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dalegtr18 Posted July 27, 2006 Author Share Posted July 27, 2006 Wow! Looks like a great tool, Peachy! And it's free! I will d/l it and run it tomorrow night. Thanks for the tip. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rons Posted July 27, 2006 Share Posted July 27, 2006 Memtest86 has been noted as both passing ram that is bad, and failing ram that is good. I wouldn't count on just one testing software for 100% reliable results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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