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I wasted 3 months blaming bad RAM when the real problem was my $8 SATA cable
For two years I ran every machine on my bench through memtest86 first anytime a client said it was randomly rebooting. Last month a guy brings in a Dell from his insurance office in Mesa, says it freezes about four times a day. I ran memtest for 6 hours, pulled the sticks, swapped them, charged him $120 in labor. He calls back 3 days later, still freezing. I finally open the case and notice the SATA cable to the boot drive is routed right over the RAM slots, kinked at a 90 degree bend from whoever built it. Swapped that $8 cable and it's been running 3 weeks straight with zero issues. Now I check cables and airflow before I touch a single diagnostic tool, and I want to know how many of you got burned by something this dumb before you flipped your whole process.
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haydenbutler3d ago
Always ran memtest first, but you just changed my whole order of operations.
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