I got a really weird problem.
Two years ago bought a set of 4x DDR4 3200 16gb each, single sided and placed them in a ryzen 5600 desktop computer, which i almost never turned it off. It worked without issue.
This weekend I wanted to dust off the PC, so I took all the components out, replaced the thermal paste and so on.
Turned on the PC again, worked apparently without issues until after a while Linux was pissed about going out of memory. Out of memory? With 64gb of RAM? I checked with dmidecode -t memory and I saw that a channel was reporting completely empty.
Shut down the PC, reinserted the second channel, rebooted, saw 64gb. One hour later, kernel panic. Rebooted in memtest86+, error in memory. What? Removed one module, error. Removed two modules, no error. Switched the modules, no error. What??
Placed the two modules that are passing the test in another computer, error. Put back in the original computer, pass test. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Now I downclocked from 3200 to 2400 and everything seems working fine.
What could be? Have I been cursed?
After a few reinsertions do the slots degrade to a point that can’t sustain 3200 anymore?
I don’t think that you will see a difference in performance. :)
SO DIMM and DIMM sockets have a somewhat limited durability (mating cycles) of just 25. link
I never reached that limit. And I’m not sure if this is related to your case.
Wow I didn’t imagine that the connector was so fragile
Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for the link
I wonder what that 25 number actually means. It’s 25 across multiple slot types so I’m guessing it’s less a measured value and more a quality control number based on their most fragile product.
Probably something like a sample is cycled 25 times and if less than X% still test as being in spec they know something is wrong with the current batch, but again that’s mostly a guess and the actual durability experienced by the end user would vary significantly depending on what the acceptable failure rate is.
I think so too. Most likely most of the sockets will survive more than 25 cycles. Maybe it’s a specified minimum durability which is guaranteed for nearly all sockets.