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Memory Has anyone RMA'd memory for failing rowhammer?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by jewelie, 1 Feb 2016.

  1. jewelie

    jewelie Ancient geek, newbie to BT

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    Hi guys

    I'm just about to upgrade my 8Gb Corsair Vengeance Blue (2x4Gb) kit for the 16Gb Crucial kit currently on Amazon's deal on the day at £42.99.

    Something that's bugged me since I bought the Corsair RAM (which cost £70 in 2014 - it had been a decade since I'd last built a PC and my old one had finally died* so I was pretty ignorant on the subject and needed the bits fast.)

    When running through tests after building, I kept getting the infamous rowhammer failures on the Corsair Vengeance sticks using MemTest86, both at 1600/XMP-Profile1 and at slower speeds/specs (i.e. the BIOS default 1333 etc.) For reference, the motherboard is an ASUS Z97-K, CPU i5-4460 and PSU a Corsair RM550.

    I've not really been very happy about this. These weren't spectacularly cheap memory modules. Most people seem to care only about whether it causes the box to BSOD, but I'm more concerned about future vulnerabilities (especially under Linux, where the risk has already been proven - I use Windows for gaming and Linux for doing other stuff.)

    From what I can see on their forums, quite a few people seem to have had this problem with Corsair RAM. And yes, I have read up on this vulnerability quite extensively, I know it's not a "fault" as far as real-world memory usage is concerned, but it is most certainly a potential issue as far as vulnerabilities are concerned, at least on some OSs, and it's certainly not what I'd expect from a such a brand as Corsair.

    My question is: has anyone out there RMA'd any manufacturer's RAM for failing rowhammer tests? Is there any point (given one will probably just get given the same type of RAM in replacement which will continue to fail rowhammer.) Do Corsair et-al even accept RMA's for rowhammer failures.

    Julie
    x

    _________
    Footnotes

    * Actually, my old one hadn't died (a pre-HT Pentium 4 2.66GHz one - when SATA was *totally* new) but I'd dismantled it and gave away / sold it 'cos I'd been given a Core2Duo based Dell machine to use instead..... but it didn't last a year. :( Oops.
     
    Last edited: 1 Feb 2016
  2. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    The main exploit was patched in both Linux and Windows around June last year. Clflush a main part of the program to gain access to systems, the patch prevents the program from existing in both enviroments.

    The second one only effects certain laptop memory.
     
  3. jewelie

    jewelie Ancient geek, newbie to BT

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    Cool! Thanks. Do you have a reference for that? I thought the only patch was for Chrome etc?
     
  4. jewelie

    jewelie Ancient geek, newbie to BT

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    The Crucial kit rowhammers just the same anyway. :-/
     

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