How long should I run MemTest?

[djdelarosa25]

I bought a secondhand piece of DDR3L for my laptop from a reputable guy online and it will be arriving tomorrow. I wanted to know how many hours should I test it using MemTest?

[LUUD18]

Till it finishes? Windows has a built in one.

[The Benjamins]

longer the better, how much ram does it have?

on 32GB I didn't get errors on a broken kit of ram after 8 hours.

[djdelarosa25]

24 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

longer the better, how much ram does it have?

on 32GB I didn't get errors on a broken kit of ram after 8 hours.

 

4 GB (the stock one on my laptop) + 4 GB (the one that I bought secondhand)

 

Is it right if I'll only test the stick that I bought, or should I test both?

[LAwLz]

In most cases memtest will start spitting out errors within a minute if the RAM stick is bad. If you ask me, I'd say after 1 minute without errors you can be 50% sure that the RAM is good. After 5 minutes it's 70%. After one pass it's 90%. After 3 passes it's 99.9%, and so on.

 

Here is something to keep in mind though. Memtest will only prove that your RAM has issues, but it will not prove that it does not have issues (even after 10 hours of tests). Even if you run the test 100 times you can not be sure that it would not spit out an error after the 101th run.

 

 

Since I am currently waiting on a new RAM kit since my last one had a dead stick in it, I plan on running memtest on the new kit of RAM. I will be running it overnight, so that will be about 8 hours.

If you want to be as sure as practically possible, I'd say let it run overnight. If you don't get any errors after 8 hours of intense searching for errors, then it's pretty safe to say they are fine.

[djdelarosa25]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

In most cases memtest will start spitting out errors within a minute if the RAM stick is bad. If you ask me, I'd say after 1 minute without errors you can be 50% sure that the RAM is good. After 5 minutes it's 70%. After one pass it's 90%. After 3 passes it's 99.9%, and so on.

 

Here is something to keep in mind though. Memtest will only prove that your RAM has issues, but it will not prove that it does not have issues (even after 10 hours of tests). Even if you run the test 100 times you can not be sure that it would not spit out an error after the 101th run.

 

 

Since I am currently waiting on a new RAM kit since my last one had a dead stick in it, I plan on running memtest on the new kit of RAM. I will be running it overnight, so that will be about 8 hours.

If you want to be as sure as practically possible, I'd say let it run overnight. If you don't get any errors after 8 hours of intense searching for errors, then it's pretty safe to say they are fine.

 

Should I test the both sticks (even the one that came with my laptop), or only the one that I bought secondhand?

[djdelarosa25]

36 minutes ago, LUUD18 said:

Till it finishes? Windows has a built in one.

 

From what I've read, it isn't that efficient in dishing out faults within the memory.

[LAwLz]

6 minutes ago, djdelarosa25 said:

 

Should I test the both sticks (even the one that came with my laptop), or only the one that I bought secondhand?

I would test only the one you bought secondhand.

You know that the one you use right now works, right? Running the test with both would just complicate things if it finds something.

[djdelarosa25]

Just now, LAwLz said:

I would test only the one you bought secondhand.

You know that the one you use right now works, right? Running the test with both would just complicate things if it finds something.

 

Thank you for your reply