Alir

Funnily, my internal drives were well treated and failed anyways. My WD 2.5" drive hasn't been so gracefully treated. Though again, this is mostly just a fluke and it is obvious this is abnormal. However, the external drive disassembly videos I have seen suggest the external drives are cheaper drives.

UK About £90. 4TB or more.

I'm concerned about longevity more than performance. Though performance is still technically a factor. I simply don't have the money for an(other) SSD.

External hard drives are often much cheaper than internal drives. What is the reason for this? I don't care about WD drives here. Their USB controllers are soldered onto their hard drives meaning you can only use them as external drives. External Seagate hard drives are actual internal drives inside a case. Despite this, they are much cheaper than buying internal Seagate drives. Is this because internal drives are better in quality and those external drives are just cheap drives in enclosures? This is one theory I have found online. Though some random people say external drives are better and faster than internal drives and internal drives are the cheap ones - except the USB connection is what slows down the external drives. All of my internal drives have developed faults and problems (decent airflow and everything). Meanwhile, I have a WD 2.5" hard drive from about 6 or 7 years ago that is still somehow working. Though my experience is very subjective, of course. EDIT: The benefit of using an external drive inside the case is that I can run SMART tests on it if I need to.

Would a bad BIOS not also cause problems with my 2x4GB RAM?

So am I correct that the conclusion is that anything could be at fault here? I was hoping for a more lazy friendly answer like "yeh just replace the RAM".

I purchased the RAM last January from Amazon. So I have around a week to decide if I will return them as faulty. HyperX have offered to replace them as it is within the lifetime guarantee. I really don't know what to do at this point. If I choose to replace them, the new sticks might have the same problem. Also, Amazon sent me an email a few months back basically telling me to stop returning stuff. Don't want to risk my account being shut down. Amazon have a solid reputation for being irrational when it comes to returns and also shutting down peoples' accounts. I mean I can try and return them. But it's a risk.

I can't post the Memory tab as I do not have the RAM modules inserted. That screenshot from above is several months old. Re-inserting the modules now would take too long as I would need to remove my CPU cooler.

The readings are exactly the same as the 2x4GB model. Except the 2x8GB are Dual Rank

When I mix the 2x4GB, the PC is fine and dandy. When I put even a single 8GB stick in any of the slots, the PC freezes. It doesn't happen instantly. At least not most of the time. Most of the time the PC runs for a bit and then randomly freezes out of the blue.

Please refer to my last comment. I am not mixing the RAM sticks at all when the PC freezes. The only RAM sticks that I have combined are the ones I'm supposed to. I mix the 2x4GB together. Or I mix the 2x8GB together.

lol where are you guys getting this idea from? I'm not mixing any RAM sticks together AT ALL. The freezes happen even when I have only a single 8GB stick in the PC. And the freezes happen with both 8GB sticks! I checked for XMP settings in my BIOS and I could not find it. Regardless though, I have not been overclocking the RAM in any way. I just load the default RAM settings which come shipped from the factory. According to my motherboard's specs, it should accept the 8GB modules.

- Memtest does not boot from a USB stick. Do you mean Memtest86? Done that. As I have said, Memtest86 randomly freezes. However it does not return an error and can run for hours without problem. Only for a spontaneous random freeze during what appears to be any test. The freezes are rare but they happen enough for me to know the PC has problems with those RAM sticks. - One pass takes over an hour I think. Not 10 minutes? - I have already pretty much done the kind of thing which you are describing. Sort of. I didn't test every slot but I tested the two main ones. Both slots are fine with the 2x4GB modules. The PC only fails with even a single 8GB RAM stick inserted. And that's when the stick is inserted into a slot that I know works because it worked with the 4GB sticks.

Yes. The Memtest and other stress test software do run. Sometimes for up to or even an hour. But as I have said, the PC does randomly and spontaneously freeze for no reason. Event Viewer does not return an error at all and just says my PC was shutdown unexpectedly when the freeze happens.

Don't know what that is.Will look into it.

I ran them separately. To avoid the possibility of the wrong settings causing it, I did remove my CMOS battery before testing each time.

I did have a moment many months ago whilst I was diagnosing my RAM problems where I thought I might have damaged the pins by slightly touching them (accidentally). I could not find anything wrong however and it was most likely just my paranoia. Please see the edit. My 2x4GB sticks do run fine without any of these problems. The problem is limited to the 8GB sticks.

I forgot to clarify. My motherboard current has my old 2x4GB RAM inserted. It runs absolutely fine. As far as I can tell.

I have 2x4GB RAM modules in my PC. My PC runs fine. No freezes. Nada. However I purchased 2x8GB RAM modules (same brand and model - just larger capacity) and both sticks, even when inserted individually in any RAM slot on any OS, cause random freezes and shutdowns. Is it possible my motherboard is faulty and not my RAM modules? That my motherboard only fails when I insert larger capacity RAM modules? I am also wondering whether there might be an obscure compatibility issue. It is worth pointing out again that my RAM modules are exactly the same. Except the 2x4GB RAM is Single Rank (one sided) and the 2x8GB is Dual Rank (double sided). I removed my CMOS battery before testing every time. My motherboard accepts 32GB RAM max. It is the MSI Z97M. My RAM is the HyperX Fury. Motherboard: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/YGsKHx/msi-motherboard-z97mgaming 2x4GB: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/KGsKHx/kingston-memory-hx318c10fbk28 2x8GB: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/CtV48d/kingston-memory-hx318c10fbk216 EDIT: I did indeed re-insert my 2x4GB RAM sticks and the PC runs absolutely fine! But if I re-insert any of the 8GB sticks, the PC will freeze at random moments. RAM or CPU load don't even seem to be the cause. I can run various RAM stress tests, including Memtest86, for hours. Going over 20 passes. But then the PC might at a random rare moment freeze. The same thing happens on Windows and Linux. The PC can be running for hours only to randomly freeze. EDIT 2: Event Viewer does not return an error at all and just says my PC was shutdown unexpectedly when the freeze happens.

I'm considering buying: https://www.amazon.co.uk/8GB-PC3-12800-PC-12800-MEMORY-Module/dp/B013LD3K54/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1547200107&sr=8-2&keywords=QUMOX+32gb+ddr3 or https://www.amazon.co.uk/Qumox-8GB-1600MHz-PC3-12800-MEMORY/dp/B00W6WFAHS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547200107&sr=8-1&keywords=QUMOX+32gb+ddr3 However I have never heard of QUMOX and I'm not sure of their reliability. Anyone know anything about this brand?

Check an anti virus software isn't running a full disk scan. If not, I would advise running a SMART scan. Your manufacturer might have software for this. Also try backing up data, formatting the drive (could consider also creating a new partition table - you can do this with MiniTool Partition Wizard) and seeing if it still happens.

Two things I would like to note. How do you know the viruses were gone? The symptoms might have gone but the malware might have been stealing your info in the background whilst allowing you to continue normal use of the OS. Another thing which I have only recently found out is that a lot of games do not work on Windows 10 due to drm: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2972271/software-games/windows-10-wont-run-some-older-cd-rom-games-thanks-to-drm.html One of them being NFS Underground.

Would that explain the slow read writes now? To clarify, the HDD is not making sounds anymore and the SMART variables are all fine. but it is very slow. Got it. Will probably leave it in the PC for random Linux installs when I want to try out a Linux distro but am not actually planning on using it for anything

I think so