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[Fayrik]

Okay, maybe I'm not an expert, but, at least, I know my stuff.
..But I'm hoping either someone here knows more than me (probably! ), or, at least find something I missed.

So, I spent £550 (GBP) or so on a new computer at the begining of the year.
By febuary, the graphics card blew up. Thankfully, it was within a month, so the people I baught it from replaced it. Since then, the graphics card has been fine. The rest of the computer however, seems a little iffy.

If Windows is to be believed, I've had three consecutive RAM failures, which have caused some pretty interesting problems in Windows, meaning I've had to reinstall four times now.

Yet, this time around, Windows just will not reinstall.
It's currently telling me that the installation disk is corrupt - yet I think it's either the Hard Drive I'm installing to.. But, yet I also think it's possible that if the RAM is broken, that could be corrupting the data as it's getting coppied.

*sigh*
Long story short: I can't work out quite what the problem is!

And, because I know it's gunna be needed, here are the components to the aformentioned computer.

New stuff in the £550 pack:
MB:   ASUS M4A77TD PRO
CPU:  AMD Phenom II X4 925 Processor (2.8GHz "True Quad-Core Design"?)
RAM:  OCZ DDR3 1066MHz 2GB (Four Sticks/Two Packs)
RAM: OCZ DDR3 PC3-10666 133MHz 2GB (Four Sticks/Two Packs)
GFX:  Zotac GT220 Synergy Ed 1GB 128bit DDR2
OS:   Windows 7 Ultimate Edition (64Bit)

Old Stuff, from my prevous comptuer that I knew was working before hand:
PSU:  Antec Earthwatts 430W
HDD:  Seagat Barracuda 7200 (160GB)
The Case: seriously, I can't tell you the model name of that, even if I did try.

Yes, it's a beautiful machine, but unfortunately it doesn't work. >:|

And, the reason I'm asking here, is because it has all my good Dwarf Fortress saves on that Hard Drive, and that thing can gen a massive world in minutes, unlike the machine I'm on now.

I'm hoping for a nice low cost solution here, since I litterally do not have enough money to  test this as much as I'd like.

Any suggestions short of a hammer are appreciated!

Edit: I just found out that the RAM isn't the type I thought it was.

[hemmingjay]

Your power supply is low and 2 gigs of ram is not really advisable for win 7. yes it will run, but not very well. If you have any money at all please try a new power supply and then if possible try 4 gigs of ram.   Power supply of 600w-650w would be needed.

[KaminaSquirtle]

Your power supply is low and 2 gigs of ram is not really advisable for win 7. yes it will run, but not very well. If you have any money at all please try a new power supply and then if possible try 4 gigs of ram.   Power supply of 600w-650w would be needed.

He has 4x2gb sticks, which is 8gb, 2gb.  At least that's how I read it.  A phenom 2 quad 925 cpu and 2gb ram wouldn't make any sense.
Though I agree the psw is light.  A good power supply is a must.

OP:  If you haven't tried it yet, I recommend making a memtest86+ disc/usb, and letting it run during the night, that should tell you if your ram is the problem.

[Fayrik]

He has 4x2gb sticks, which is 8gb, 2gb.  At least that's how I read it.  A phenom 2 quad 925 cpu and 2gb ram wouldn't make any sense.
Though I agree the psw is light.  A good power supply is a must.

OP:  If you haven't tried it yet, I recommend making a memtest86+ disc/usb, and letting it run during the night, that should tell you if your ram is the problem.

Yeah, do I have 8GB of ram in total.

Thanks for the link, I had considered a third party memory testing program, but since windows had one in-built, I tried that. The results where inconclusive to say the least. Hopefully that'll shed some light on the state of the ram.

As for the PSU, I've been thinking I need to upgrade it since I got the computer, but the trouble is, I'm hardly rolling in cash, and bigger PSUs use more power, so while I'd be happy to pay enough up front for a PSU, I want to keep the max wattage as low as I can, so that the maximum power the computer uses stays low. (Less 'lecky used = more money saved.)
Any ideas on what the best wattage would be for a computer of that spec?

[Calhoun]

Any ideas on what the best wattage would be for a computer of that spec?

550w would do you just fine. You could probably get away with less, but that way you have some upward mobility.

[Fayrik]

550w would do you just fine. You could probably get away with less, but that way you have some upward mobility.

Cheers, I'll look out for one.

As for my RAM... The results are in.
Chip 1: 0 Errors [Passed]
Chip 2: 700,000+ Errors [Failed]
Chip 3: 8 Errors [Failed]
Chip 4: 1 Error [Failed]
Any ideas on what could cause such an astronomical, and, clearly to me, repetative failure in my RAM?
I'm certain all three of those bad chips where working when I got the machine - and I'm also certain that they didn't all break at once.
(And, most importantly, they didn't break while I was handling them.)

[hemmingjay]

Thanks for clearing up my failure to understand your Ram. 8GB is plenty obviously.

I still think this could be a power supply issue, depending on the sequence your mobo uses to supply power. RAM will fail if there are differences in any of the sticks. The first one will always work(unless fried) and then if the next is not being properly powered you will get a metric fuck-ton of errors. 3 and 4 will fail upon the same principle.

Is it possible that one or more of your sticks were bad from the original purchase?

Also I recommended 600w-650w psu because I estimated that you were running at 250w-300w on average and would be under 50% utilization of your psu which means longer life and less heat(high heat also robs you of efficient energy use). 550w will be just fine, just explaining my answer.

[Fayrik]

I still think this could be a power supply issue, depending on the sequence your mobo uses to supply power.

While, I doubt I could ever be 100% sure of anything, I think it's not a PSU issue.
Those tests where ran on each ramstick individually for a more accurate result. All of them where in RAM Slot 1 while Slots 2, 3 and 4 where empty.
I'm almost certain that these are broken RAM chips I'm looking at. I'm trying to work out now how exactly that happened.

Is it possible that one or more of your sticks were bad from the original purchase?

I would have liked to have thought so, but the first of these problems didn't show up till April. I had bought the PC in January. It ran for a month or two, flawlessly.

It seems like the RAM has burnt out in use some how, but how that could have occurred is beyond me.

[Pillow_Killer]

Try getting faulty sticks out and test again. Install back a single corrupted stick, test again, etc. Try changing slots around.

[Ephemeriis]

This just screams faulty PSU to me.

Bad power will fry anything and everything.  And if it isn't frying things, it'll give you inconsistent results.

A bad PSU could certainly kill a video card.

It could also kill your RAM, or just give you memory test failures.

I'd definitely look to replace the power supply.

You don't want something terribly cheap.  You want something nice and solid.  Wattage is important, but so is quality.

I'd be somewhat concerned that your motherboard and/or CPU might be iffy at this point.  If you've been running off a flaky PSU for a few months there's really no telling what kind of shape the rest of your box is in.

[Fayrik]

This just screams faulty PSU to me.

Bad power will fry anything and everything.  And if it isn't frying things, it'll give you inconsistent results.

A bad PSU could certainly kill a video card.

It could also kill your RAM, or just give you memory test failures.

I'd definitely look to replace the power supply.

You don't want something terribly cheap.  You want something nice and solid.  Wattage is important, but so is quality.

I'd be somewhat concerned that your motherboard and/or CPU might be iffy at this point.  If you've been running off a flaky PSU for a few months there's really no telling what kind of shape the rest of your box is in.

That was a nice and solid PSU. It wasn't the most expensive thing, but what made it stand out to me was the fact it's actually got a very high efficiency.
Oh well, looks like it needs a new PSU either way.

Currently, the CPU itself seems fine, but the Motherboard is worrying me.
What I think I could do with right now, is a way to test the motherboard, to see if there's anything there that's not quite right.

It does strike me as a little odd that the PSU would be the cause though. While it's entirely plausable, it doesn't really have any symptoms. The fans are running smoothly, it's as cool as it's ever been, and I've not seen any behaviour on it's part that I'd consider out of the usual. It'd been servicing my other computer just fine for quite a while.
I guess my question at this point would be, would under-powering cause permanent damage?

[hemmingjay]

not to beat a dead horse further but if you google bad power supply bad ram you will find how a faulty power supply will report many different things as faulty, especially RAM.

[Virex]

If the power supply is seriously underpowered but otherwise fine you'll also get a lot of data loss in your ram (and thus corruption.) That's easy to check though, just try switching sticks 1 and 2 around to see if the corruption is stick-dependent or slot-dependent.

[Sir Finkus]

Your power supply is low and 2 gigs of ram is not really advisable for win 7. yes it will run, but not very well. If you have any money at all please try a new power supply and then if possible try 4 gigs of ram.   Power supply of 600w-650w would be needed.

For the record, windows 7 runs just fine on 2gb of ram. 

[Fayrik]

For the record, windows 7 runs just fine on 2gb of ram.

That's true, but from what I can tell, it'll use at least half of that as system memory.
Which is not terribly helpful when you're that low on ram.

But, in any case, seeing as it's gunna take ages for me to get around to buying new hardware...
Is there anything I should look out for once the new Power Supply and RAM goes in?