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Thread: PC techy question - RAM

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    PC techy question - RAM

    A friend at work asked me to take a look at his laptop.

    It was cutting out, with the fan running constantly before hand.

    I expected it to be an overheating issuem, maybe dust, etc blocking the cooler.

    Took the back off and sure enough, withing a few minutes the fan was on constant then shut down.

    I checked with a thermal camera and the CPU/GPU cooler was fine, less than 30'C but there was a hotspot on the RAM connector, at around 50'C.

    I swapped the RAM for a spare to test, and it solved the issue, however, the hot spot is still there (~ 45'C), just on one part of the connector.

    Is it normal for RAM or the connector to run warm, or possibly pointing to a problem, which may have nackered the original RAM?

    I would try the other channel, but not sure if it will boot with nothing in channel 1.

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    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Yes DDR memory can run quite warm, and 50degC aint all that hot for components.

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    Oh no, it's not that hot, granted, but it just stuck out as being a lot hotter than it's surrounding. A hot spot!

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    Guest Girth's Avatar
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    Sounds like a dodgy temperature probe on the mobo/cpu or bad heat sink contact. If its spinning up straight away and your seeing low temperatures with the gun I doubt its the ram.

    Have you been able to get into the Bios and have a look a CPU temp?

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    The RAM sorted it

    As I said, with the original RAM the CPU fan would spin straight away and constantly until the laptop shut down.

    The only thing that made me think to swap the RAM was the obvious hot spot on the connector. After swapping the RAM with some spare it was fine, laptop was trouble free.

    As a test I put the old RAM back in, same again, CPU fan on straight away, wouldn't even boot.

    Put my test RAM back in, fine.

    Strange I know, but maybe the RAM fault was causing the mobo to think the CPU was over temp? Who knows!

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