[yacuza]

I bought a Mac mini from a reseller in town and decided to have a go and put in some more ram in it. The ram i chose was a cheap DDR400 CL2.5 "Canyon" type, in fact it was the cheapest 512MB ram i could find. I installed Tiger on my Mac, and everything works, but i am experiencing some things which might lead me to believe something is flaky with my ram.

I have some crashes. Safari and iTunes sometimes crash, in iTunes i can sometimes hear the audio stutter or distort shortly before it crashes.
I have some hangs. The computer can sometimes stay on for hours on end without hanging, sometimes it hangs shortly after restart.

All this tells me something is afoot with my ram, but why is it that the mac seems to work flawlessly even when using all of my ram(for example when i run memtest).

Has anyone on this board experienced similar things when using El-Cheapo ramsticks? Did changing to another brand(i noticed the original was Hynix brand, also DDR400, but CL3).

I have yet to find something reproducible which causes a crash or a hang, it seems quite random to me.

Regards, Kristian

[sodamnregistered2]

It does sound like the Ram.

Try to run hardware test CD on it.

Check the console logs.

[polendo]

Did you had kernel panics at all? or just crashes?

I also changed my memory to a PC2700 Kingston value memory.. and no problems at all on my Mac mini. It also had PC3200 Hynix stock. My kingston memory also has the 2.5 timing.. so I'm not really bought that your memory might be the problem since apperently you have only experience crashes. I wouldn't argue if you had experienced kernel panics. I would do the following.. fix permissions and use the apps that tend to crash. If they do crash, open up the mac mini again and re-install your original chip and use your Mac mini.. if it doesn't crash then the memory looks like the cause. If it crashes.. then I would rule out the memory as the cause.

[yacuza]

Thanks for replying.

I did run the Hardware Test CD, both quick and extended, and it passed both without incident. I've run Disk Utility and let it repair permissions after every time i had to force shutdown the mac by holding in the powerbutton(i.e after a hang). I did experience one kernel panic, i got the grey box with all the languages in once. I proceeded to reinstall my old ram and let the computer run through the night with iTunes happily playing away, no problems. In fact i have not experienced a single problem with the original RAM. I'm pretty sure it is a faulty ram and have made arrangements to take it back to the store. They would not give me a replacement until the original had been tested, so its back to slo-mo Tiger for the time being. Well, i'll take a slow machine that is rock solid over a faster, dodgy, machine any day. My concern is since the ram does pass all tests fine, that it might also be able to fool a hardware tester as well, but i hope not.

Will write back with the conclusion of the mystery.

[James41]

When you go back to the store trade your stuff for PC3200 400mhz C3 ram, that works quite well on the mini or any mac. Newegg has 1 gig sticks of Corsair ValueSelect pc3200 400 c3 ram for only $95, Very good quality ram and works great in the Mac. They also have some Rosewell Pc3200 400 C3 1 gig sticks for $80, again it works good in the Mac. Both have livetime warrantie.

[tooki]

For any Macs in the DDR era, I suggest only top-grade RAM (think Crucial). Modern Macs are just too picky about RAM quality for it to be worth wasting time swapping out cheap stuff till you find one that happens to work OK.

tooki

[James41]

Originally Posted by tooki

For any Macs in the DDR era, I suggest only top-grade RAM (think Crucial). Modern Macs are just too picky about RAM quality for it to be worth wasting time swapping out cheap stuff till you find one that happens to work OK.

tooki

I agree with you "cheap" ram isn't worth the risk. However, Crucial isn't the only good ram on the market, there is Corsair, Kingston, Crucial, and a couple others. Why pay a higher price for Crucial when the Corsair 1 gigers are for $95 and their quality matches any of the top brands? I'm all for loyalty, but i also like a good price. I was a bit leary of the Rosewill ram until i found out they are a rebranded PQI ram which i know works fine in the Mac.

[yacuza]

Thank you all for your replies!

It is nice to find a forum where a thread such as mine actually gets some attention. Your thoughts are much appreciated. My Canyon ram stick is currently at the vendor for evaluation, i was foolish enough to mention that i had used my ram in a Mac, to which the service person promptly replied "we do not support macintosh, if it turns out to be a compatibility issue youre screwed" or words to that effect. I told him to test the ram for an extended period of time, as i did manage to install Tiger without problems with this shaky ram stick, and passing memtest/Apple Hardware Test etc. He went on to describe their particular testing procedures, but when i asked if they had a dedicated DIMM tester, the answer was no. Apparently they test their ram modules in PCs, i can only hope the dodginess will be apparent in their setups.

In the meantime, i have been giving my mini a run for its money, and i must say im impressed just how well it performs, despite it being the lowest-end mini available. For the last 48 hours or so, it has been running iTunes, AFP file downloading, Safari and Dashboard continually, and i am amazed at the responsiveness of the thing. Granted i do not run a high-end PC as my alternate, but it does have twice the ram of the mini, and doesnt use half as much ram as Tiger. I havent tried running Logic or any other heavy-duty apps yet, but in all honesty, it does work fine with the measly 256 meg of ram, and i remember someone on a board saying it would be an insult to a fellow family member to let them run with their mini/256MB ram for a period of time, and then later upgrade to 512. Well this is exactly what i am doing(albeit involuntarily) and it is not a problem at all. Sure i get the beach ball at times, especially when using AFP extensively(across a 512 kbit link) but i just switch to another app and pursue whatever i was doing there.

I also do some work on a recent dual G5, and while it is certainly much more responsive, i do not feel the mini is crippled or excruciatingly(?) slow with only 256 meg of ram. In fact im impressed by the way Darwin/Tiger utilizes ram and swapping running on the mini.

Warm Regards,
Kristian

[James41]

The Mac Mini is a very capable computer, even with 256 ram. Where you see the difference is when you are running multiple programs, with 512 ram the lag and jerkeyness go away. The Mac caches a lot of things and can make use of more memory so more is always good. 512 seems to be a sweet spot for the Mini, but it can always make use of more.

Never could figure why Apple is so stingy with ram, 256 in todays world is simply not enough. Although for the price they charge for ram, i guess we are better off to get it someplace else rather than from them.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by James41

I agree with you "cheap" ram isn't worth the risk. However, Crucial isn't the only good ram on the market, there is Corsair, Kingston, Crucial, and a couple others. Why pay a higher price for Crucial when the Corsair 1 gigers are for $95 and their quality matches any of the top brands? I'm all for loyalty, but i also like a good price. I was a bit leary of the Rosewill ram until i found out they are a rebranded PQI ram which i know works fine in the Mac.

I never said Crucial was the only good brand. But Crucial is known to work on Macs reliably, and frankly, their prices aren't unreasonable. (If you shop around, you can get it for little more than the cost of Crapola™ RAM.) I don't consider Corsair or Kingston to be top-grade, though — high quality, yes, but top grade? No. That's reserved for Micron (aka Crucial), Samsung, Siemens and Hynix, IMHO. (Note also that those are the top RAM brands for big OEMs like Apple and Dell, neither of which wants to fool around with memory testing — they want to know the RAM is top-grade to reduce warranty costs.)

And also, $95 isn't that much cheaper than Crucial — they want $115, and that's even with their markup for Mac memory. I'd much sooner spend $20 to get something guaranteed to work than to have to waste time with memory that may or may not work correctly 100% of the time.

tooki

[James41]

Fords and Chevies my friend. You like Crucial and you don't mind paying higher price go for it. I have used Corsair in my last 7 computers over the years and have never had a problem with any of them. Normally Corsair is a bit higher priced on their prices, at the moment they have a pretty good deal going, so i stocked up.

Give me a break on the Apple and Dell, they go for the price and then rip the customer on the extremely over priced ram they sell in their computers. Only an idiot would pay apples price for ram.

[tooki]

I think the Apple and Dell RAM choices are very very valid, because a) many customers who have more money than time do buy their RAM for convenience, b) lots of big buyers (schools, big companies) that buy lots of computers from Apple and Dell direct are sold OEM RAM at commodity prices, without the huge markup, and c) lots of buyers never go beyond the factory RAM.

The fact is, the OEMs choose top RAM because it's cheaper to pay a slight premium for a known-good product -- they don't have to waste tons of time and money testing and replacing tons of RAM, or spend lots of time on free phone support for customers with marginal RAM that works OK most of the time, but causes otherwise-inexplicable crashes and whatnot.

I'm not saying that other RAM is necessarily bad, just that buying top-grade RAM saves so much hassle that it's worth the extra 10%, especially on computers that are as picky about RAM as recent Macs are.

tooki

[yacuza]

After some email correspondance, i have managed to get the store to give me a store credit, to the amount i paid for the ram. I have chosen to buy a Kingston DDR PC3200 CL3 stick from the same place, for about $2 more. I also found a post on the net, on a local Swedish mac board, about a person buying seemingly exactly the same ram as i, from the same store, back in February of this year, and had no problems whatsoever. Is it true that earlier mac minis were more lax about this, and if so, can anyone give some serial number ranges and hardware revisions to look for on the mobo?

I am on my way to the store now to get my new stick, and will post again tonight with an update. Lets all pray to the hardware overlord that my Ram is accepted and that the mac runs as smooth as with its stock memory.

Regards,

Kristian

[Rainy Day]

I have read, but do not know for a fact, that the PC3200 standard specifies 2.6v. The Mac Mini spec's are for 2.5v. While very close, it is not an exact match. My guess is PC3200 will likely work most of the time, but not all the time, because it is slightly out-of-spec.

Here are the technical spec's from Apple for Mac Mini RAM:

The RAM expansion modules for the Mac mini are 184-pin SDRAM DIMMs that are 2.5 volt, unbuffered, 8-byte, non-parity, and PC2700 compliant. The speed of the SDRAM devices must be rated at 167 MHz or faster.

Important: RAM expansion DIMMs for the Mac mini must use DDR SDRAM devices. If the user installs a DIMM that uses EDO or SGRAM devices, the computer will beep several times when the user attempts to restart the computer. …

The RAM DIMMs are required to be PC2700 compliant. To obtain information about the PC2700 specification, see the reference information at “RAM Expansion Modules”.

The SDRAM devices used in the RAM expansion modules must be self-refresh type devices for operation from a 2.5 V power supply.

DIMM Configurations
The largest DIMM supported is a two-bank DIMM of 1 GB using 512 Mbit using SDRAM devices. The largest bank size supported by the memory controller is 512 MB. The maximum number of devices per DIMM is 16. CAS latency is 2.5.

NewEgg currently has a PQI 1Gb RAM stick which exactly meets those spec's for $89 (free shipping).