Best RAM Tester

[DraconisMaximus]

I just wanted to get opinions on the currently available methods for testing RAM. Most forum posts here don't really talk about the different options and Reddit posts tend to be contaminated by those who don't know what bootable utilities are.

Passmark's classic memtest86 is still regularly updated: https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm

There is an open source offshoot too called Memtest86+: https://memtest.org/

And Reddit seems very enthusiastic about TestMem5: https://github.com/CoolCmd/TestMem5

but that is in OS software and can therefore miss things.

I've always used Passmark but am generally a big fan of Open Source projects.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

havent personally bothered with bootable memtest but afaik its just as reliable as any other test unlike its windows version that completely sucks

 

for other options theres prime95 which i personally use and theres also others like ycruncher karhu etc.

[RONOTHAN##]

20 minutes ago, DraconisMaximus said:

but that is in OS software and can therefore miss things.

Honestly my luck has been the opposite, TestMem5 catches errors that MemTest86 doesn't catch, assuming you have the right config setup, and usually pretty quickly. There was one where it passed over 2 hours of MemTest86, yet it would consistently error within 10 minutes of TestMem5 with the 1usmus_v3 preset. 

 

It's my go-to. I will still use MemTest86 on occasion for my homelab systems just for the convenience, and realistically if the system is unstable enough that I feel it warrants a memory stress test, it'll error regardless of the stress test I use. The difference mainly shows up in the seemingly random errors that you'd be willing to chalk up to a bad piece of software rather than a hardware issue, where the memory is only slightly unstable, not where there's a major issue with it. 

[steamrick]

TM5 is pretty good

I also really like Karhu, which has proven most reliable in my experience

 

Though really you should run both overnight on 12h+ runs each before you declare your memory configuration to be stable

[porina]

5 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Honestly my luck has been the opposite, TestMem5 catches errors that MemTest86 doesn't catch, assuming you have the right config setup, and usually pretty quickly. There was one where it passed over 2 hours of MemTest86, yet it would consistently error within 10 minutes of TestMem5 with the 1usmus_v3 preset. 

A subtle distinction is ram stability and IMC stability. For practical purposes it might not matter so much which it is from a user perspective, but it could lead to this type of situation.

 

I've had a situation in the past that will run memtest overnight without a single error, but give errors within seconds of running Prime95 that was easily proven not due to core stability. I think the access pattern is more adverse to IMC stability. TestMem might be doing something similar. I hear some people like y-cruncher to test ram too, because again it is a very ram access intensive workload with mixed reads and writes.

 

So like all stability testing, there is no "one thing" that does everything. Run a mix of intensive workloads. I'd do at least one pass of memtest to ensure coverage and to catch any bigger problems. Then throw a selection of others at it to increase confidence.

[RONOTHAN##]

2 hours ago, porina said:

A subtle distinction is ram stability and IMC stability. For practical purposes it might not matter so much which it is from a user perspective, but it could lead to this type of situation.

 

I've had a situation in the past that will run memtest overnight without a single error, but give errors within seconds of running Prime95 that was easily proven not due to core stability. I think the access pattern is more adverse to IMC stability. TestMem might be doing something similar. I hear some people like y-cruncher to test ram too, because again it is a very ram access intensive workload with mixed reads and writes.

 

So like all stability testing, there is no "one thing" that does everything. Run a mix of intensive workloads. I'd do at least one pass of memtest to ensure coverage and to catch any bigger problems. Then throw a selection of others at it to increase confidence.

True, though at least one guy on here I've seen it is confirmed to actually be memory instability that MemTest86 did not find but TestMem5 did. The system would blue screen with XMP on, but running MemTest86 overnight would not give an error. Running TM5 it would error within half an hour, and when testing each stick individually, one would error consistently and the other would run indefinitely. Replacing that one stick resulted in XMP working just fine. 

 

I will agree though that multiple tests are a good thing. It's just that in my experience, if it's gonna error, it does it in TM5. 

[DraconisMaximus]

Thanks for all the varied responses. I think if anything it seems that while RAM is faster than ever, it is less stable than ever too; which is why testing it is such a nightmare. It almost seems like RAM now has its own manufacturer specific software compatibility issues like has long been the case with GPUs.