Is it safe to buy used ram?

[Gunn]

I need to buy new ram and the prices are too high.I thought to buy used.But i don't know if it affects performance to buy it used

[userzero]

As long as the seller is trusted or you can see it working if buying privately, and long as condition is good then yes it is absolutely fine. RAM is a freaking rip off so go for it. I did.

[deXxterlab97]

Ask owner to run some memtest first 

[Hip]

1 minute ago, CUDA_Cores said:

yes. I've dug RAM out of bins at the recycling center sitting in piles on top of eachother and it still works. 

A friend of mine uses 48 GB of Ram from recycling centers. But there are some cases where viruses can even attack the Ram. And once this happens you should rather throw it away.

[Gunn]

Well Thank you guys, that was fast

[Guest Generallee]

1 minute ago, Hip said:

A friend of mine uses 48 GB of Ram from recycling centers. But there are some cases where viruses can even attack the Ram. And once this happens you should rather throw it away.

Isn't RAM Volatile ? Even if it had AIDS it would not have it anymore after power loss

[Armakar]

2 minutes ago, Hip said:

A friend of mine uses 48 GB of Ram from recycling centers. But there are some cases where viruses can even attack the Ram. And once this happens you should rather throw it away.

What? That isn't true at all. RAM is volatile. RAM, on a hardware level, is incapable of holding data when deactivated. A virus can't stay in RAM.

[Guest Generallee]

3 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

If RAM forgets everything when the computer shuts down, what is the RAMs default gender? 

 

Hmmmmmmmmm

[Hip]

11 minutes ago, Armakar said:

What? That isn't true at all. RAM is volatile. RAM, on a hardware level, is incapable of holding data when deactivated. A virus can't stay in RAM.

Just google it. I know that the Ram flashes it's memory when restarting. But there are viruses that can attack it too.

[Hip]

14 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

Viruses can attack the ram...

 

Okay that's true, but RAM is known as DYNAMIC random access memory. Meaning even if a virus got to your RAM, the virus would be wiped when the computer is shut down. 

 

That honestly sounds like fear mongering made up by manufacturers to get you to buy new RAM. 

Didn't know that. I thought you can infect your own data with it then.

[Armakar]

3 minutes ago, Hip said:

Just google it. I know that the Ram flashes it's memory when restarting. But there are viruses that can attack it too.

No, there aren't, If RAM is capable of holding any data, it's randomised and irrelevant and would rely on completely outwards factors like the temperature. If you think a virus can retain inside memory alone, you have no clue how RAM works on a scientific level.

Viruses might be able to latch onto RAM if they flash themselves to something like a UEFI, sure. But onto a stick of ram thrown into a garbage bin? That's absurd.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Put it this way - I went to a scrapyard and got a bucket of DDR2 and all of it works. So yeah, probably

[Guest]

Ram is one of the components that is safe to buy used, you should be fine.