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Firms Get Away with Selling Untested DRAM
peppytech75 writes "Melanie Hollands in IT Manager's Journal reports that 'In recent months, some Asian DRAM memory manufacturers have been getting away with selling untested ("UTT") DRAMs. Disturbingly, the practice seems to be getting traction at the lower portion of the module business. This is being done mostly by Taiwanese DRAM makers, who are undercutting the tier-1 guys by selling untested and unmarked parts.' What's the solution here? Or is there an actual solution to what amounts to pirate companies issuing counterfeit parts?" (IT Manager's Journal, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG.)
I don't follow this analogy...
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We've been burned several times recently buying lower tier RAM. Out of a lot of 20 pieces, nearly a third was DOA or died horrible with a month of installation (and yes, I know how to install RAM).
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
These days I don't reccomend anyone to buy cheap no-name unbranded RAM. Of all the PC hardware problems I've had over the years, about 80% are down to bad faulty generic RAM. I know only use Crucial or Kingston. They check the RAM, I know the RAM I buy is going to be working. RAM is one of the most important parts of any computer system. Is it really worth saving the £3-£5 by getting cheap unbranded RAM? As the saying goes, you get what you paid for.
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Quality really seems to be a thing of the past. Cheaper != Better.
I definitely prefer to go to shop, get the die, plug it in, run a test program for a few hours and have it replaced if I find any errors, than to pay some 80% extra for a sticker saying that some malaysian kid did it for me.
Yes, because waiting for my mail order RAM to turn up, finding it's buggered and then having to spend a month trying to convince the supplier to get their finger out doing their slow-as-treacle RMA procedure is such a good use of my time... (Not to mention the very real chanced that the replacement RAM will be just as screwed)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
lose sales (and their reputations) because of this, the problem will die out.
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First off, the difference isn't 80%.
Secondly, how much is your time really worth?
For me, (and I live within 5 miles of multiple PC stores), buying RAM, taking it home, installing it, finding it to be bad (After running a 45 minute or longer Memtest86) and then returning it to the store would more then cost me more then my average hourly rate at the office.
I would rather pay the few extra dollars, get home and have an extremely low chance of installing bad RAM into my PC, then have the possibility of spending the whole day driving back and forth to the PC store to eventually find a good working stick of RAM.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The old saying stands true here... You get what you pay for. If you are going to only pay pennies on the dollar for Memory. Well you should expect a high number of failures.
If your system memory is mission critical, you probably are going to buy top-shelf rather than bargain-basement, aren't you?
I test the RAM even though it's supposed to be already tested by the company - I can't afford to lose the time lost if it fails while in production.
Unless these companies are specifically targeting anybody willing to do the testing themselves & go through any replacement hassle I don't see what they're aiming at... that nobody will notice?
How many end users would be remotely interested in doing this stuff? And they say they're going to increase this practise and that others might do the same?
I would imagine factory testing isn't just to check the chips themselves but also to check up on the manufacturing process itself, how low quality are they aiming at? If they're hell bent on producing worthless trinkets they might as well make glass beads.
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Then you still might end up with some marginal RAM that happens to work fine during your test, but fails under slightly less favorable conditions. Like the next hot summer (the performance of digital circuitry degrades with high temperatures).
When the german C't magazine did a RAM test a few years ago, they worked with a company that specializes in such tests. The used test environment can reportedly (IIRC) simulate borderline conditions and test the module under these. It does also cost a lot more than a PC.
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I believe we're slowly becoming a nation (world?) completely driven by prices at the expense of quality. I continuous hear things like "Why did he buy a Lexus for $50,000 when a new Hyundai is $15,000?" "This CD-R is $.10 each, this one is $.09. Why would anyone buy the $0.10 one?" People don't always get there's more to a product's specs than the price.
Really, it's easy. If they're selling untested, unmarked parts and this is a problem, just don't buy untested, unmarked parts! Let the market sort itself out. If the market decides that the cost saving here isn't worth it, the demand for slightly cheaper untested parts will surely dry up, and the manufacturers will catch on and stop trying to sell them.
If there are enough people out there though who DO want the cost saving brought on by buying untested crap - let them! Nobody says you have to buy cheap crap if it's on the shelf. You get what you pay for. You want good quality - pay good money. You want bad quality - pay peanuts.
Basic Economics, really. And it's not as if the likes of Crucial, Corsair, Kingston etc. are doing it.
Why is this even an issue? I think it's commonly accepted wisdom EVERYWHERE that going for the lowest bidder will give you cheap rubbish. Computer components are no different.
This isn't necessarily a problem. If the yields on the DRAM chips are high enough, then it can make sense to NOT test the individual chips and instead wait to do the testing at the module (DIMM) level. If the chip yields are perhaps 95%, then the chance that a DIMM will be good is 0.95^8, or 66%. That may be high enough to make it worth while to avoid the cost of the chip testing.
Now, if the chips are not tested AND the DIMMs are not tested, well that's another story...
Probably just lucky, Windows hitting different areas of memory to RH etc, as I've heard the reverse happen too (RAM failing on Windows but being fine on RH or other distros).
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If people are savvy enough to build their own systems, they are certainly savvy enough to test the memory themselves, so I see no problem here. Of course the "split" may increase the tested RAM prices a bit (smaller market share), but I don't think it would be a significant rise. Certainly not bigger than introduction of "lifetime warranty" dies besides the standard warranty ones.
If you save $10, remember the chance of getting the faulty RAM is quite low. You -may- spend more on shipping (if you didn't buy from a local reseller, which would be a wise move in the first place), but the chances are far better that you just won't. Consider this in this way: A gamble where you can -lose- the shipping fee (of, say, $30) in one of, 100 cases, and win $10 discount in the remaining 99 cases. The chances are quite favourable.
Perhaps it's just a perception thing -- if Windows had been randomly crashing like that I would have been somewhat more inclined to just write it off as something Windows does. From what the previous user of the machine told me, Windows XP had similar problems on that particular system.
Linux had a badram patch for a while that would allow you to map and work around bad memory, but I don't know if anyone's been keeping it up to date.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What I wanna know is: is someone paying that analyst? Isn't it obvious that this _could_ be a PR smear campaign? She's heard "rumours", but she doesn't cite one hard _fact_, it's all speculation...or a smear campaign (most likely).
C'mon guys, grow up. Stop being gullible.
i had a dodgy motherboard (the RAM slots were dodgy). Linux installed but was a bit crashy, Windows wouldn't complete the install.
Its because Windows and Linux tickle the RAM in different ways.
The invisible hand will "correct" for this. If places like Frys, BestBuy, etc. buy this untested RAM and get a lot of returns, that costs them money and you can bet that next time around they won't buy from these manufacturers. When that happens enough times, these guys will either start testing RAM or go out of business.
It's a pain for the consumer (to return bad RAM... I've had to do this often enough that I stopped buying RAM from Frys) but the problem will eventually be solved by "evolution" -- companies selling product that can't compete change or die.
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Just FYI, _all_ "Made By ATI" video cards are actually made by Sapphire. So you're saying... what? That ATI's own preferred manufacturer is not high end enough for you? :)
Have you actually checked that Sapphire uses worse RAM than ASUS? No offense, but somehow I doubt that.
Basically there's a helluva lot of difference between actually having a clue, and just being a slave to brand names.
Sometimes big brand names are actually _worse_ than some of the lower end competitors. (E.g., for the longest time Sony had a tradition of picking the cheapest TFT panels made by others, claiming it has _half_ the latency value that the panel's manufacturer claimed, and selling that shit for twice the price of better products.) In a lot of the big name cases you don't pay extra for quality, you just pay for having the brand name slapped on a piece of shit.
Sometimes the big name stuff is the exact same stuff that the smaller manufacturers sell. E.g., ATI cards are made by Sapphire. E.g., IBM monitors (or at least a lot of them) are made by BenQ. Yes, the el-cheapo monitor company. Etc.
So, you know, just buying the most expensive version isn't always the solution. In fact, it's usually a very bad solution.
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Call me a geek, but this is the scariest thing I've read all day! Sooner or later these cheap untested and mismarked components are going to make it into crucial safety or health systems and a lot of people are going to die who didn't have to.
This is just another example of sacrificing quality and ultimately safety in the name of a few more dollars (or a lot more dollars if you're really dirty and unethical). Over the last few years, I've been paying more for strong brands I can trust, but with so much counterfeiting going on now and the ensuing price pressure driven corner cutting, I wonder how long top tier brands will retain the quality that many of us now depend on?
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That is only a problem if you insist on using mail-order shops.
I think the only PC shop aroung here is PC World. Lets see, half a gig of Corsair PC2700 memory is listed at 71.96ukp in PC World. Or I can mail order it from dabs.com for 39.18ukp. And it's not as if I have a lot of choice from PC World - they don't even do 1 gig or 2 gig DIMMs. Tell me again why buying from the local shop is better value than mail ordering?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
If you want it to work right, buy parts from a tier-1 vendor from a reputable reseller. Buying brand-x crap might be cheaper today, but it's more expensive in the long run as you'll have to replace it sooner, and waste more of your time tracking down wierd errors caused by flakey hardware.
I hope the lesson wasn't too expensive for you. Next time, shell out a few extra bucks and get Crucial or Kingston RAM.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Let's talk about the article. First of all, she cites all Asians, but then says mostly Taiwanese manufacturers. Then she says mostly Taiwanese manufacturers and then only cites a single manufacturer for doing it in low quantities with a rumor that they might increase production. She cites not a single source, anonymous or otherwise, and reports from New York, and she even seems to confuse China with Taiwan at one point in the article (Taiwanese are Chinese only in the sense that Australians are Anglo but with immigration that's not really accurate anyways). What kind of news reporting is this? If anything, I would say that she's just starting a random rumor that's a malicious attack on lower-cost, lower-priced Taiwanese DRAM manufacturers.
All this is not to say that it is not a characteristic of many manufacturers in Taiwan of being the low-cost provider. Much of that is moving to China these days, but that's been their specialty for a long time. Looking at a big market, figuring out how to produce at really low cost, and out producing everyone. Basically the Dell mentality. These days, Taiwan has up the food chain somewhat to design and precision manufacturing etc, but anyways, the point is, this article is crap and there's good reason to be suspect of it.
That's only if you don't count the cost of the ensuing loss of consumer confidence.
Something bad management frequently neglects.