RAM trouble

dragon2309

P.I Dragon
Recently, like in the past week and a hlaf my PC has developed a probelm. Here it is:

Im not exactly sure what you call it but i know it has a name, its the electro-static noise that lower brand RAM makes when its accessed alot in any one time. That noise. Well, it does that for about 5 seconds every minute or so, and it stops everything the PC is doing, if im playing musioc in winamp or mediaplyer it stops and goes all jerky if im typing a message it stops typing and resumes after the RAM has finished going crazy.

I cant burn CD's anymore because when it gets about a minute through the RAM goes crazy, makes that hissing noise that you get and then the burning program reports a buffer underrun error and stops. If im scrolling down a webpage it will freeze and the webpage goes all screwed cos its not actually scrolling when i scroll down.

I figure its some adware or virus calling shit load of memory references at any one time, but i scanned and scanned in safemode on everything!!! uninstalled every program that i didnt see necessary in control panel. Stripped the PC down to just bare windows components and it still makes the noise and freezes everything.

I dont see it being corrupt/dead RAM cause tis not crashing or throwing up any errors in the event viewer or anything. I even started XP in safemode and ran it like that for 30 mins, it happened in there too.

Im reallly at a loss, i didnt do anything different to ti a week ago to bring on the change, i dont know whats going on...... HELP!!!

dragon2309
 
Yes, i am damn sure its not my hard drive and yes RAM does make noise, take a look at some of crucials newest expensive RAM, they talk about it all being engineered to reduce electro static noise.

Anyhoo, more info for ya, i monitored the activity ni task manager and when the RAM goes crazy the CPU usage rockets to 100%. I cant seem to see anythign in the process list that gets shoved to he top of the list thoguh. all seems normal, but its quite clearly not.
 
Hmmm

I have never even heard of simmilar problem as you are facing. I would blame it on something else than the RAM. As far as I am aware, electro static noise is not something that you can hear, but rather interference:

A field of random electrical charges that can affect an audio line. Electrostatic noise can be generated by neon or fluorescent lighting, electrical motors, and other broad-spectrum emissions sources. Electrostatic noise is the electrical field which is generated by EMI.

JAN :D
 
well, ok, perhpas its not electro-static, i dont know the actual name for it, but it is the RAM and it is making a noise, because im not heaing things.

It seems to ahve stopped, havent had a freezing moment for about an hour now.
 
Hmm.... I was wondering about one more thing. Could it be the CPU causing the problems because you mentioned that when it hit 100% it went crazy. Perhaps try the normal frequency without overclocking and if that would fix it, then perhaps not OC by that much.

JAN :D
 
Hmm.... I was wondering about one more thing. Could it be the CPU causing the problems because you mentioned that when it hit 100% it went crazy. Perhaps try the normal frequency without overclocking and if that would fix it, then perhaps not OC by that much.

JAN

He he, i knew someone was gonna mentio my OC, i tried that, one of the first things i did, but its never happened before when its been overclocked, even when it went up to around 3.6 Ghz and was so unstable it didnt last 15 secs inside windows it didnt make any noises like that, so why would it be doing it now??.....

As i said, its not done it for about 1hr 10mins now, perhaps its gone away.... I will keep a close eye on it all though. Oh and you said "when it hit 100% it went crazy" well, its the pther way round really, when it went crazy it hit 100%. Not sure if that makes a difference thouhg.


dragon2309
 
If you're worried that it might be software related, I would download and run memtest86+. If it does give RAM errors, also check your PSU voltages because that can cause similar problems, particularly if the 3.3V rail is too low.
 
thanks, +3.3v is at 3.31 so i dont think that is a problem. +12v is 11.98v but i think its alowed to be within +/-5% so thats ok. memtest86 reported no errors on several passes. But as i said a few posts back it hasnt done it for a few days now, which id good.
 
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