More dead Ballistix

J

Jimmy the Greek

Gawd
Joined
Aug 20, 2002
Messages
657
I'm on my second pair of Ballistix DDR2. The first died on an eVGA 680i board, but that has a reputation for killing RAM, so I wasn't surprised.

I've run this set on an Abit IP35 Pro at 756MHz and 2.1v for three months, but just got a BSOD so it must be dying.

My questions are twofold:
  1. Is Ballistix considered fragile on motherboards other than 680i?
  2. Is Corsair XMS2 known to die out? I'm thinking about buying that as a replacement.
 
Also, is it worth an extra $10 to buy the XMS2 Dominators? Or is the finned heatspreader a marketing gimmick?
 
I've been running some DDR2800 ballistix for about a year now (see sig), on fsb's ranging from 266 to 415 with absolutely no issues.
 
Ive got my Ballistix @ 1020mhz 4-4-4-12 2.2V and they have been that way for a long time now. I am using an active memory cooler which might be helping. I keep seeing more and more ballistix issues lately. Might be better off with G.skill. Im using thier (4gb) DDR1000 kit and running it at 1020mhz also with 5-5-5-15 2.1v. Can't beat it for 95$.
 
Copyright said:
Ive got my Ballistix @ 1020mhz 4-4-4-12 2.2V and they have been that way for a long time now. I am using an active memory cooler which might be helping. I keep seeing more and more ballistix issues lately. Might be better off with G.skill. Im using thier (4gb) DDR1000 kit and running it at 1020mhz also with 5-5-5-15 2.1v. Can't beat it for 95$.
Click to expand...

I ran my Ballistix (rated for 1000MHz) around those timings on my 680i, and those lasted a good 9 months. I'm the surprised the new set has gone bad so quickly. No active cooling on either, btw.

I'm on XP 32-bit, so am looking for 2GB. Is this set of G. Skill worth $20 over the standard XMS2 and/or $5 over the Dominators?
 
Jimmy the Greek said:
I plan to keep it in snyc with my FSB (378), so 800 is fine. But G. Skill is definitely worth the extra money over Corsair?
Click to expand...

If your on a budget just get the cheaper corsair set. I see more issues with the Dominator kits then I do with the cheaper XMS kits.
 
I had issues with the XMS2 set that I had so I got Ballistix and haven't had a glitch yet I am running my voltage at 1.8 though.
 
I had two sets of Ballistix ddr2 800 go out on me as well. I think it was due to power fluctuations from the wall socket. I added a UPS and filter and they have been going strong now for about 5mo+.
 
I have Transcend aXeram DDR2-800 @ DDR2-1040 5-5-5-15 2.1v

Been SUPER happy with them, and the new DDR2-1066 versions are supposedly able to hit 1150MHz. Mine have the Micron chips in them. I would suggest these to anyone.
 
ok i think my ballistix may be dying... im getting random lockups... the majority of them result in a mangled looking display do i assumed it had something to do with crossfire acting up so i took out the second radeon... but now im getting things like superfetch crashing and the catalyst control center crashing... i ran memtest86... and it found no errors... ran it for probably 10 hours... just kept cycling the same tests... but i have never used the app and had no idea what i was doing... it said it was running the memory at 796 mhz... couldnt figure out how to top out the speeds... but the lockups are starting to get frustrating so any advice would be nice... especially since the ram is only about a month old and i never had these issues until upgrading the ram to these... i think ill also note that im using active cooling and passive cooling solutions on the memory... the mobo im using comes with heat spreaders/heat pipes to devert heat away from the memory and i also have the geminII cpu cooler which blows right over the memory so i cant imagine heat is an issue... but i never could get it to boot at 800/1066 at anything less than 2.1v and when things started locking up i tried it at 2.2v and that changed nothing so its back at 2.1v
 
I'm on my second pair of crucial ballistix PC8500's as of a few weeks ago myself. The new ones I received seem to work fine so far. They don't look as good...no top bridge like the ones before...more fragile. I don't really care as long as they work good. I had the others set at 2.0...tried 2.1 a few times, but now I think i'm keeping these at 2 or less. Timings are 5-5-5-15. I had one stick die....wouldn't post with that bad stick...so back they went as a pair. Edit: forgot to mention that the pair did not match like the ones before...numbers right after each other...these new ones' numbers are way different...maybe that doesn' matter?:eek:
 
Despite their problems, I went with the Dominators because of the special fins. I figure they can bring my case temps down.

About the Ballistix, one thing I noticed is that if I alt-tabbed out of a game like Team Fortress 2, I couldn't reopen the game afterwards. It would just sit there on the desktop for 45-60 seconds, at which point I would give up and kill the task. Is that a symptom of dying RAM?
 
Had to RMA one of my 4 Tracer 8500 sticks, and now I'm failing mem tests again and apps are dieing. Dunno if it's the RAM or the P5K that's killing them, but I'm paranoid now, so that's as good as any to start putting a new system together with new mobo and RAM at this point :) Picked up a 2x2GB pair of those Dominators that are on sale for $129 after rebate, thread for it is in the Hot Sales forum
 
It turns out that my SATA cables were the problems, and not the Ballistix. I'm inclined to return the Dominators (unopened), but would keep them if their optimized fin design kept my case cooler than the Ballistix.

Will there be a huge (2-3+ degrees Celsius) difference in termperature between the two, or would it be negligible at best?
 
I would say, sticking a $5 fan over the RAM will do more to keep it cool and increase longevity than those large finned heatspreaders ever will.
 
Pass on the Dominators for sure, I killed 3 kits of those in the lifespan of 1 kit of Ballistix Tracers.
 
975XBX2 ate through Ballistix 1066 on a bi-monthly basis. Finally had to get rid of the board after my last RMA of new replacement memory.
 
Just finished my first RMA of Ballistix Tracers PC2-8500. They new ones i got are one sided modules and the LEDs are different and blink faster. They don't overclock as good as my previous tracers though :(
 
The Pharaoh said:
Pass on the Dominators for sure, I killed 3 kits of those in the lifespan of 1 kit of Ballistix Tracers.
Click to expand...

I hear almost nothing but bad reviews for Ballistix Tracer RAM.

I knew a guy that killed two sets of them! Then received a brand new revamp and they wont even OC for shit. ;)

Not to mention so many of them just fry. My take on all of that is memory + LEDs = No.

So far my Dominators are solid, not particularly OC'able, but Im running at least 198MHz over their stock speed at all times with no problems.

Edit:
Just finished my first RMA of Ballistix Tracers PC2-8500. They new ones i got are one sided modules and the LEDs are different and blink faster. They don't overclock as good as my previous tracers though
Click to expand...

Exact issue my friend had. i don't really see any advantage to ordering RAM that's notorious for dying, but was revamped to not die, but just is slow now. Pointless.
 
I am the RAM killah! I burn them all! At any rate, no I did not break three kits through my own fault, in fact I have owned two kits of Doms since that have been 100% trouble free. I am going to give Corsair credit and just say I had the worst luck with RMA replacement sticks ever.

But on topic, I just got a pair of double-sided Ballistix on order from Crucial to exchange for these POS single-sided sticks they sent me and all I can say is thank God. The sticks do low voltage operation really well but can't OC worth a damn and give my board weird POST messages.

P.S. Vile I think you are on the right track with the AxeRam. I have heard their 1200mhz spec'd kit is a wonder. Plus it's spec'd for that speed at 2.2v which hopefully means it won't explode like other kits of that speed.
 
I bought my initial 4x1GB set of Ballistix 1066 last November for $300. They worked great until this February, upon which they promptly died on me; netting me bluescreens every 5 minutes.

RMA'd and got a new set - this time with the cheaper single sided DIMMs. Died after 3 weeks. Got one more RMA, and again rock solid for the first 2 weeks.

I've said screw it with Crucial memory. Ended up buying 4x2 GB G.Skills when Newegg had them onsale for $80/4GB.

Read the latest reviews on Newegg for the ballistix memory modules. EVERYONE has been having the same thing happen to them. They work great for a few weeks and then burn out. Poor form Crucial.. poor form.
 
My 3rd set just died, used a different motherboard than the first two sets, and a different power supply than the first set.

I was running this set of ddr1066 Tracers at 4-4-4-12 ddr800 1.95v for the past two months, ran memtest for a few 4-5hour periods over the past couple of months and passed perfectly each time.

Now it was brought to my attention from a couple of people at V-H that this was probably because I was undervolting this ram.

My first set died and was at 2.2v from 4-4-4-12 and 5-5-5-18 ddr800 to 5-5-5-18 at ddr1066 and it was causing some problems from the start until it eventually caused a sea of red errors in memtest. I sent the ram and ip35 pro back for RMA as I had tested my tracers in another board and they ran fine until they started tossing out errors again. I tested the ram from the other system in the ip35 pro and had some errors so I thought the board and ram were both toast.

The retailer told me the motherboard and ram were both ok and sent them back to me, they stealth replaced the ram on me because I recieved dimms with one side of ICs as opposed to the doubled sided ones I had before.

I tossed it all back together and it ran memtest fine at first for a 5-6hour period at 5-5-5-18 ddr800 2.0v ( I was told by the retailer to try giving it less volts because of heat issues)
I ran it for a couple of weeks until I started having BSODs and other crashes, memtest was another sea of red text when I ran it.

So I sent the motherboard and ram back again for RMA, this time they told me that they did replace the ram and that the motherboard was fine. This time when I received my ram and board back again I left the ip35 pro in the box and installed the ram into my Gigabyte DS3L and ran the ram at 4-4-4-12 at 1.95v which was what my promos based OCz sticks were doing for the past couple of months.
It passed memtest for a 5-6 hour period, ran fine for a couple of months until I came home today and my screensaver was locked up, I rebooted to a bsod and ran memtest to another episode of 3000+ instant errors.
 
I bought 4GB of this stuff last summer and they are running since. Lots of bad ones being sold right now...
 
The monster cooling apparatus on Reapers seem to keep them cooler than other memory - helps that they use thermal grease instead of thermal pads (seems so dumb to me that everyone doesn't do this).
 
I have to admit my Ballistix experience has left a bad taste in my mouth regarding Crucial, and I still point customers I work with to their site, heh. But they're not using high-end stuff anyway. I still like Crucial, but I think I'll be gunshy about them in the future. Certainly didn't use them in the new system.
 
Taiguy said:
I bought my initial 4x1GB set of Ballistix 1066 last November for $300. They worked great until this February, upon which they promptly died on me; netting me bluescreens every 5 minutes.
Click to expand...

I got the same ones in October of last year, 4x1gig and just had a pair go bad the other day after 7 months. I should have went with Gskill from the beginning but the Ballistix were supporting the hot Micron chips at the time.
 
I have 2 sticks that worked less than a month. I emailed them and all I got was an automated response saying it would take 5+ days to reply.
THEY NEVER DID

F this company...there are a LOT of better brands with warranty.
 
sparks said:
F this company...there are a LOT of better brands with warranty.
Click to expand...

Exactly, I knew these sticks were bad news the second I heard of them. There's just something about LEDs on my RAM that doesn't sound stable....at all.

Just went Quad Dominators and couldn't be happier :)
 
Jimmy the Greek said:
It turns out that my SATA cables were the problems, and not the Ballistix. I'm inclined to return the Dominators (unopened), but would keep them if their optimized fin design kept my case cooler than the Ballistix.

Will there be a huge (2-3+ degrees Celsius) difference in termperature between the two, or would it be negligible at best?
Click to expand...

UPDATE: I was able to run the Ballistix at 3-3-3-8 and 712 MHz with just 2.0v, effectively undervolting them. After a couple months of this, one of the sticks gave out yesterday. Just goes to show you that tighter timings can kill RAM.
 
Jimmy the Greek said:
About the Ballistix, one thing I noticed is that if I alt-tabbed out of a game like Team Fortress 2, I couldn't reopen the game afterwards. It would just sit there on the desktop for 45-60 seconds, at which point I would give up and kill the task. Is that a symptom of dying RAM?
Click to expand...
Eh, TF2 takes an unusually long amount time to restore once you ALT-TAB out - it's the only game I own that has this issue (maybe it's trying to re-sync with the server? no idea...). My very rough estimate is maybe 10-15 seconds to restore it in my case. But failing to restore, period, after almost a minute, I've never experienced. And I'm using standard-grade Buffalo RAM (not the tight Firestix).
 
Yaden said:
Same here, TF2 takes a few good seconds to come up if it gets minimized. And I replace my Ballistix with the following, glad I did. Ballistix simply wouldn't run reliably at 4-4-4-12 for me, even with upping voltage, etc.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145177
Click to expand...

Funny, my Ballistix passed Memtest 25 times at 3-3-3-8 and 2.0v just three weeks ago. They were rock solid until yesterday, when I got C1 POST errors with one stick.

Crucial needs to reassess the durability of their products, and make the quality more consistent.
 
Could the problem with Ballistix DIMMs be that they don't have enough bypass capacitors or have bad layout that allows the voltage spikes generated by the RAM chips to destroy themselves? I saw one no-name DIMM with lots of empty spaces where caps probably belonged.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top