Ram testing

[Adam H. Stewart]

I am having problems with my home machine that I suspect are related to ram - or bad ram. I have a boxxtech machine it is a bit long in the tooth now about 4 years but has been a good machine. It could do with a complete rebuild at some stage. The problem I have is of 3dsmax doing a hard crash when I am rendering. They are not particularly taxing frames - using scanline ( no vray at home yet ...) but I get this strange hard crash.
I suspect is has something to do with Ram, does anybody have a suggestion on what the problem could be and where I can find a ram testing application.

Thanks as always.

[bluescreen2]

to test your ram, try memtest. its available as an iso-version (bootable)

http://www.memtest86.com/

[mike.edel]

i'd suggest memtest plus

memtest plus - LAST VERSION : 1.65 10/01/2005
it's a newer version based on memtest86, open sourced with better support for newer motherboards:
http://www.memtest.org/
they also have a version that runs off a bootable (dos) usb stick

ps: check your ram timings
if those are ok and you detect ram errors with memtest (plus) try to run memtest on a single module at a time

in my case i was able to identify a faultiy ram module (brand new corsair valueram) and have both modules replaced - no problems ever since

are you cpu temperatures ok? the coolers tend to fill up with dust after some time, reducing their efficiency a lot (also the fans tend to die after some years)

[Adam H. Stewart]

Thanks guys

Thanks a million I'll give a shot and also have a look inside the old beast. It has been some time since I checked the fans and cabling. It is funny, I have been useing the home machine for the internet only for the last couple of years - main macihine in work, now I'm doing more work at home and need to get things in shape - I am finding lots of problems.

Thanks again.