[gentoo-user] Re: Suspend to RAM caused crashes

[Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de>]

On 08/21/2011 07:08 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 8:43 AM, Nikos Chantziaras<realnc@arcor.de>  wrote:
>> On 08/21/2011 06:33 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 8:12 AM, Nikos Chantziaras<realnc@arcor.de>
>>>   wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 08/21/2011 02:19 PM, Francesco Talamona wrote:
>>  [...]
>> The RAM gets hot when there's RAM load (meaning being used heavily), not
>> when there's CPU load :*)
>
> Do you feel heat when your PC is turned on and running hard? Of course
> you do. The whole machine heats up. The CPU under load heats the
> machine so the RAM and drives and everything else heats up also. Not
> as hot as the CPU, but it heats up. So I might agree with you - the
> RAM might not be 'hot', but it would certainly be 'warmer'.
>
> I'm not suggesting that this would cause a normal DRAM stick to go
> bad, but only that if he had a very marginal bit of RAM that it might
> go out of spec...

On a laptop maybe.  On a desktop, the air around the RAM modules get 
maybe 1 degree C warmer (I know because I have temp sensor there, 
connected to the front panel).

When it does get warm is when there's GPU and disk load.  Those suckers 
combined can raise the temp inside the box by 5-6 degrees.

The meaning of all this is that if memtest can't find any errors after a 
full run (which can take an hour), the chances of getting an error that 
is really related to RAM under CPU stress are very slim.