Can a 100% used ram cause a bsod?

[Rujdaga]

I ran some tests on my pc, i pulled out one stick of ram and i tested this 4gb stick, after i ran a test which filled it like 100% (all 4 gigs are used) it caused a bsod, is that normal?

[Tristerin]

What are you testing it with?

[Som3a]

6 minutes ago, Rujdaga said:

I ran some tests on my pc, i pulled out one stick of ram and i tested this 4gb stick, after i ran a test which filled it like 100% (all 4 gigs are used) it caused a bsod, is that normal?

I have a friend that does programming and when they try and compile their code they very often get BSODs (they were compiling on a 6th gen i3 laptop from 2016 but they're now in the process of building a proper PC) they found out that the problem was maxed out ram (8gb of DDR3 im pretty sure) so to answer your question, yes, maxed out ram can in some cases cause BSODs (they once had to reset the system but thankfully had a backup external drive)

[Moonzy]

it could be normal... but if you're testing RAM, use memtest86

[AbydosOne]

10 minutes ago, Rujdaga said:

I ran some tests on my pc, i pulled out one stick of ram and i tested this 4gb stick, after i ran a test which filled it like 100% (all 4 gigs are used) it caused a bsod, is that normal?

If in Windows and you have pagefile set to zero, then running out of RAM will cause a BSoD. With pagefile, it will start pushing "old" memory pages to a system disk, which will dramatically slow the machine, but is there to prevent running into the hard upper limit.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

13 minutes ago, Rujdaga said:

I ran some tests on my pc, i pulled out one stick of ram and i tested this 4gb stick, after i ran a test which filled it like 100% (all 4 gigs are used) it caused a bsod, is that normal?

Short answer, yes.

 

Windows has mitigating factors as explained by @AbydosOne but it is not fail proof. Some workloads just need real RAM.

[svmlegacy]

20 minutes ago, Rujdaga said:

I ran some tests on my pc, i pulled out one stick of ram and i tested this 4gb stick, after i ran a test which filled it like 100% (all 4 gigs are used) it caused a bsod, is that normal?

what was the stop code?

[Rujdaga]

58 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Short answer, yes.

 

Windows has mitigating factors as explained by @AbydosOne but it is not fail proof. Some workloads just need real RAM.

Also can maxed out ram cause pc to slow down (mouse stutter on desktop etc, cuz one of my friends gave me this ram to test, its 8gb ddr3 2x4 from corsair, and one ram is damaged, it had a lot of errors in memtest and other had no errors but read only 3.4gb of ram instead of 4, so both of them are bad)

[PianoPlayer88Key]

My probably fairly limited experience with maxed-out RAM is

 

 

Generally the system will slow to a crawl,

 

 

Especially when you have fairly little RAM and have pagefile on a hard drive.

 

 

If your RAM is tightly enough constrained, even pagefile on an SSD won't help.  This system would take several MINUTES to respond to some clicks that a "normal" configuration might respond to before the next screen refresh.

 

 

When this setup hit its physical RAM limit, the screen / app (Chrome, IIRC) went black, and the PC just about froze for a few minutes.  It eventually recovered, though.

 

 

 

This one wasn't so lucky.  This was the last screenshot I was able to get - not 20-30 seconds later it didn't BSOD, it just powered off, then restarted a few seconds later, complete with POST.

I think I may have seen it hit 0 RAM free (or close to it) right before it went down, but couldn't get a pic.

I even had several hundred GB free on the 1TB 970 Evo that I had assigned the pagefile to, idk why it didn't increase the swapfile further when it needed it.

 

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

Okay somehow there's an image icon showing up at the top of my post that isn't there in the editor (so I can't delete it).  An extra image (that I had originally imported from existing attachments, but rejected for this post) shows below the editor in the attachments section, but when I've deleted a pic from there it has also deleted it elsewhere, like whatever other post I might have previously put it in.

Okay now it was at the bottom of the post, deleted, we'll see what happens on submitting / refresh.

Nope, still here, afraid to use the attachments section of the editor to delete as I think it's used somewhere else on the forum.

Zz

 

 

 

[Rujdaga]

8 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

My probably fairly limited experience with maxed-out RAM is

 

 

Generally the system will slow to a crawl,

 

 

Especially when you have fairly little RAM and have pagefile on a hard drive.

 

 

If your RAM is tightly enough constrained, even pagefile on an SSD won't help.  This system would take several MINUTES to respond to some clicks that a "normal" configuration might respond to before the next screen refresh.

 

 

When this setup hit its physical RAM limit, the screen / app (Chrome, IIRC) went black, and the PC just about froze for a few minutes.  It eventually recovered, though.

 

 

 

This one wasn't so lucky.  This was the last screenshot I was able to get - not 20-30 seconds later it didn't BSOD, it just powered off, then restarted a few seconds later, complete with POST.

I think I may have seen it hit 0 RAM free (or close to it) right before it went down, but couldn't get a pic.

I even had several hundred GB free on the 1TB 970 Evo that I had assigned the pagefile to, idk why it didn't increase the swapfile further when it needed it.

 

 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Okay somehow there's an image icon showing up at the top of my post that isn't there in the editor (so I can't delete it).  An extra image (that I had originally imported from existing attachments, but rejected for this post) shows below the editor in the attachments section, but when I've deleted a pic from there it has also deleted it elsewhere, like whatever other post I might have previously put it in.

Okay now it was at the bottom of the post, deleted, we'll see what happens on submitting / refresh.

Nope, still here, afraid to use the attachments section of the editor to delete as I think it's used somewhere else on the forum.

Zz

 

 

 

Dude thank you so much for this, this ram my friend gave me to test had dozens of errors in memtest64, and it was limited to 3.5gb instead of 4, thanks again, this community is awesome