Corsair Vengeance 1866 SODIMM - scam!

I bought some Corsair Vengeance 1866 sodimm (2x4gb) which was clearly advertised as compatible with:

Any PC or notebook which accepts standard DDR3 SODIMMs

However....
A 2nd Generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processor is required for Vengeance memory to run at its maximum rated speed

and
Vengeance laptop memory upgrade kits installed into systems using 1st Generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processors will operate at the default memory speed

Fair enough, not only do i have a 2nd gen SandyBridge, but I also have a 3rd gen Ivy, and now a 4th gen Haswell.......... so it's ready to rock right???

Wrong

When installed the system fails to boot, it wont even post, the power light comes on, and the goes off again. I have the same results in my Clevo W110ER with a Pentium B960, an i5-3360m, an i7-3720qm and in my P150SM with an i7-4700mq.

Totally bloody useless. I have spoken to Corsair who advised me an RMA is highly unlikely to fix this problem and the RAM is likely fully working, but my system is not compatible!!!

given the above statement of compatibility I am left down right confused!

My old W110ER has customisable memory and latency timings so I was able to set it 10-10-10-32 @ 1866Mhz and get it working (the are the standard timings listed) however this required a modified bios and obviously not something I want to do with my week old P150SM as it's under warranty, and of course, it is advertised as working in these systems!

I am running the latest bios in everything and I'm 100% sure there is not an intel mobile CPU on the market capable of officially running memory past 1600mhz - so what kind of SCAM is this?

I have a retailer refusing to refund me, and a manufacturer saying my apparently compatible systems are actually incompatible, despite both of them being among the small, small handful of the 2 or 3 worlds fastest laptops in their class at the time.

- I have been SCAMMED - no returns, no refund - they should be wearing mask!

 

The problem with this corsair Ram, it cannot run neither 1600MHz nor 1333MHz, because it has incomplete jedec timing table;



You could fix with Taiphoon Burner;

 

Yeah I've book marked a few links from other threads regarding this, but while I have a long history of overclocking desktops and laptops I'm still not happy or comfortable about having to void my own RAM or system warranty to get ram working, that should should work in the first place.

But given the circumstance it seems my RAM's "warranty" counts for nothing anyway.

My W110ER will support SODIMM's up to 2133mhz unofficially, but this corsair RAM still will not run unless I manually input the timings, which as I said, I can't do on my P150SM, I don't see why I should have to void my laptops warranty by unlocking my bios to get this RAM doing something that it should do out of the box!


Edit
I guess my point is that unless your pretty dam good general overclocking, tuning and comfortable with bios and firmware flashing and modifying then this RAM is just a waste of money, because it doesn't work, it isnt compatible with any i5 or i7 - in fact it very, very particular about what it will work with, and if you buy it and it doesnt work, then you can't have a refund...........

I could probably achieve this performance on a standard 1333 or 1600mhz samsung CL9 ram stick if I wanted to go through all this effort of reprogramming the JDEC tables - so I've paid a premium for some stick to "save me the hassle" and offer me the simple plug and play performance, and they have failed

 

No consumer protection in your country? No 30-day no-questions-asked refund rules? Why are you talking to corsair about this? The product is falsely marketed, refund the product and tell the reseller to go fiddle sticks.

 

Yeah, nothing is 'compatible' unless it is (in my specific systems).

I would never buy a component on a promise... I buy with the understanding that if it doesn't work, it will be returned for 100% refund and no restocking fee.

Otherwise, I simply don't buy. (I don't need the latest and greatest 'that much').


No scam as far as I can see. Only buying from the wrong company (and I'm not talking about Corsair here...).


In your shoes, I would either sell the RAM off, flash a BIOS that has the tools I needed to get the RAM working at spec's with my system (especially now that it is under warranty...) or chalk this up to a 'learning' experience and be more careful where I purchase items from in the future - and give/donate the Sodimms away (friend, foe - as long as they can be used by someone).

Either way, the motto 'buyer beware' is appropriate here - if anything I would be returning the notebook (the 'platform' is at fault here...) and not the RAM...



Good luck.

 

I've had the for a while, although I opened an RMA with the supplier pretty quickly, it has dragged on and on while I waited for new bioses and potential fixes and we're probably not far from 8 or 9 months away from the initial purchase.

Yes the retailer's "policy" directly affects my consumer rights, so I will have to convince them to pay me, or take them to court, which would cost me a fortune, and the cost's are hard (but not impossible) to recover through our small claims courts. Essensially, they could lose, refund me the £50 and I'll be stuck with £1000 of legal fee's and lost weeks or months of my life.

 

What's wrong with the laptops I've tried it in? Corsair and Kikatek clearly say it will work in any laptop with a DDR3 slot, maybe not at it's advertised speed, but it should work

** are you associated with Corsair or something?

 

No, not associated with Corsair - just trying to use/follow common sense.

Doesn't matter what is advertised - don't waste your time worrying about this.

Unless you can put a lawsuit that will stick (and you'll make millions off of this issue...).


Sure, it should work. But it doesn't.

Deal with it.

 

clearly your idea of common sense and mine are very very different.........

again,

What's wrong with the laptops I've tried it in? It says it will work in any machine, and it says it will run 1866mhz in certain machines.

I'm not seeing 1866, and not seeing anything, it just doesn't work.

This CLEARLY is Corsair's issue - Kikatek are just a retailer, they sell things, that's it, they know nothing about it's compatibility or anything other than what they are told by Corsair.

It's a bit like going to fuel up your car, and been given diesel via the petrol pump.....

.... and then jumping in & saying "the cars faulty" "deal with it" and "learn your lesson"

- what a moronic statement.

 

No, it's more like someone doesn't have the ability to communicate effectively...

If this is how you were talking to the suppliers, I can see why they don't want to help.


Sure, some claims were made on their part that are just 'wrong' in your situation.

However, your attitude is not helping you solve your issue, is it?


RMA the modules and see if that does indeed fix things. Since they work on your older platform, the issue does seem to be your 'week old' new one, right?


Accept what is right in front of you - and keep in mind that just because something worked previously in another setup - doesn't necessarily mean it will work in the new.


From my perspective; this is more like going and changing PARTS on your car and whining why the part doesn't work with the car - when it may be the car doesn't work with the part (yeah; there is a difference).


Good luck.

 

they don't work on the old machine, keep up.

My attitude is only to your under developed intellect and inability to read or fully understand a situation.

The chips are advertised are working in any machine, albeit without guaranteeing the advertised speed - this I full accept and have made clear, your "Wisdom listens quietly..." quote does not seem to materializing.

The only way to force the the chips to work on the previous machine was to flash a modified bios (voiding the laptops warranty) that would allow me to set my own timings. I understand manually setting timings is perfectly acceptable on a desktop machine, but I repeat the RAM is clearly listed as plug and play, no bios settings should have to be made.

After nearly 9 months, I still communicate politely and concisely.

Please read a thread before throwing in daft advice, and if there are to many big words, or the plot is to long to comprehend, just leave quietly with your impression of intellect and authority intact.

 

I agree with you, the Ram is faulty advertised;

It should have complete jedec time table with 1333Mhz and 1600MHz speeds too. Although RMA wouldn't solve this problem, so better if you sell these RAMs and buy Kingston Hyperex series.

 

I feel you. Best Buy shafted me when I tried to return the god-awful Simcity Societies back in 2007.

"We don't accept used software returns."

But what if the diesel was advertised as "compatible with petrol cars"...

 

10chars

I will likely reprogram the SPD the purpose of the post was more to throw out the fact that these are NOT as advertised and do not work properly, to save other people from buying them.

And with the "so what, just deal with it" attitude of people like tilleroftheearth, people NEED warning and they should be aware of what they getting themselves in to.

Maybe tilleroftheearth is in some way associated with Kikatec or Corsair but what ever.... not helpful at all, terrible attitude and moronic advice.

 

I can fully understand what you are conveying (ineffectively).

But this is what you stated in your opening post:

You stated that 'you got it working'. So the RAM is not at fault. The systems you're trying them on are the issue - obviously.


Anyway, I can see that trying to help you is a waste of time.

Glad that you've been able to communicate for nearly 9 months. Keep trying.

 

The thing that's been pointed out several times is that he shouldn't have to modify anything for the RAM to be plug-in-play. He should have been able to drop it into his system and have it work without any fuss. Instead, as he said, he had to modify his BIOS--which potentially voids his warranty--to make it compatible.

Going back to the car analogy, it would be like a pump advertising fully compatible unleaded gasoline, but, once its been pumped into your car, requires you to modify your gas tank and buy a special additive to make your car run.

I have no idea how you're interpreting this as the OP's fault.

 

So....uh....coming back to the problem, why can you not ask them why they think that your systems are incompatible if they are as advertised? If you have asked them this exact question, what can they possibly say other than "we don't know why but it has to be your systems" which if they do, well, I suppose yeah - scam.

But then again, I know these chips to work at 1866. It could be either a faulty RAM or I don't know what. I don't think it is Corsair's fault. This product does work at the stated speed.

 

Corsair said, it is not compatible because my CPU doesn't support 1866mhz.......................... so I asked them to kindly point me in the direction of a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th gen Intel chip that does support 1866mhz....... I'm still waiting for a response but the last time I checked, none of them did.

I know the M17X runs these chips straight off the bat, no tweaking needed - but so far, out of the top 20 fastest laptops in the world, this is the only model that I've seen confirmed as working.

As AdamAnt mentioned the JEDEC table is incomplete, the speeds and timings for 1333 and 1600 mhz are missing, and these are the ONLY 2 speeds that the 3rd, and 4th gen intel officially support, so it would be more accurate if they said the ram "possible/maybe" will work in anything except a 3rd, or 4th gen intel - but it will run at 1066mhz if you install it in a Sandy Bridge or Westmere ( & possibly the 45nm Nelham quads)

I don't know if they have addressed this missing JEDEC information in new revisions maybe, I suspect the tech guy a Corsair wouldn't know anyway (I did ask) he asked me to try "enable" XMP....... which throws his knowledge of these chips in to serious doubt given they aren't XMP enabled.

 

Who said anything about it being the OP's fault?

All I said is that when all is said and done, it is what it is. The OP should simply be smart enough to buy from a source where he/she can get a full refund - no questions asked - instead of making up conspiracy theories and/or not wanting to RMA the potentially defective parts to see if another sample will work.

Doesn't seem to hard for me to understand?


And all the analogies so far are missing the point: buying fuel (compatible or not) is not equivalent to whether or not a specific component will work in a random system. Or systems.


Nothing is guaranteed compatible in the tech world until it is proven in 'your' system - that is the number one rule that I've followed since the '70's...

 

yeah ok,

You are still missing the CORE point (among many others) of this post. It is a warning to others who are thinking of buying this RAM.

As you rightly say, make sure you purchase from a vendor where you can return the RAM, even if it "working as intended by the manufacturer" because that is the situation I'm in

This ram is NOT FAULTY, it works at the timings specified by Corsair, the fact is that corsair have left 1333 and 1600 speeds and timings out of the JEDEC table....... so the only 2 speeds the 3rd/4th gen intels support, are not supported by the RAM.

Plan is to buy a copy of Thaiphoon burner (as I'll use it for other stuff anyway) and I'll probably reprogram them and insert a modified version of 1600mhz JEDEC table's with some XMP profiles for good measure, but this is hardly acceptable given that it is supposed to just plug and play........

 

Thanks for your more reasonable response Calibre41,

I can agree with all you said (above post) - I agree that it is not acceptable.

If you had/were able to return it though, that would give the manufacturer the most direct feedback about how unhappy you are/were with their offerings.


That may have even forced them to change how they proceed going forward too.

 

I will probably RMA it which will cost me a few quid but at least I'll get a fresh set, possibly with updated JEDEC tables which would fix the issues

 

I saw these but with all the poor ratings skipped them...............

 

These are the sticks you want on the right.

 

Are those the Cas9 1600mhz Samsungs??

Ive been looking for some of them for a while

 

Cas11 but using 30nm samsung chips. These puppies will do tighter than stock timings at 2133mhz. Hoping for cl12 2400mhz though.

 

cool...... I want some lol..... Where can I get some of those! CAS11 at 1600 really doesn't *sound* all that special... are you bumping it up to 1.5v to hit 2133 at cl11?

http://www.cclonline.com/product/10...Memory/Samsung-4GB-DDR3-Laptop-SDRAM/RAM0904/


cheap cheap cheap! - I think...

I might just get 4x4gb for £112 and clock the nucking futs out of it :thumbsup: (thats $175 USD for you lot in the states)

Seems these sell for $54.99 per 2x4gb so..... maybe we're paying a premium here in the UK

$110 USD equals £70 GB, plus the 20% import VAT equaling £84 gbp plus £8 handling (just for charging the import duty..... seriously...), plus shipping from the states say £10-15 and we're back up to £102-107 so not much to be saved.... the shops probably carefully set prices so it's just easier to get ripped off here directly with them rather than getting ripped off by the tax man and his agents ...........amazing how £70 turns in to £100+


-bonus been to get rid of this bloody "Vengeance" as it has certainly left me seeking it........

 

You have seen the announcement that Samsung are now producing 20nm ddr3 RAM and promise speeds up to 2133mhz - right out of the box.......... I expect we might see these in 2014

Samsung Now Producing Four Gigabit LPDDR3 Mobile DRAM, Using 20nm-class Process Technology

and they have started 14nm testing apparently..........

BTW... what's your thoughts on the 1333mhz versions of the 30nm modules, do you think they'll clock with similar/same results (the link I posted sold out 25 to 0 stock and I never got any )

 

I wonder if the mobile Kaveri will support 2133 mhz natively. Would be a shame if it didn't.

 

Kaveri stock is @ 1866 according to these guys. Is that what you meant by native or did you mean without some tinkering?

 

That article only mentioned 1866 mhz RAM to compare the bandwidth to GDDR5, and it's far outdated (Standard Kaveri will not have GDD5 support unless if you custom order).

Native: No tinkering to force the chip to support something. Kinda hard to force a Richland APU to accept a 2133 mhz RAM anyways.

 

..actually, the ram runs on a "front bus" x "base clock" multipler (it's not really that any more, now they're operating with a base clock divider, really). So the jdec table reading 933Mhz will be running on 933Mhzx2=1866Mhz effective, if the fsb:dram ratio is 1:2. Other options can be all kinds of things, which the jdec table will account for(as you can see in the example over there, with ram timings that don't fit a 2:1 ratio at all).

The problem is that pretty much all laptops come with either:
1. locked fsb:dram ratio.
2. locked ram timing
Or more commonly both.

So when you put in a new set of ram, you run into the problem that your previous ram may have been severely underclocked, but having decreased timing. Timings which your new ram simply won't accommodate (very common that "faster", higher clocked ram have higher lower timing thresholds for actually working). Or that the new ram will be set at the same speed as the previous ram, except it will just fail to boot.

Or that it's essentially impossible to actually increase the clock, because the bios just locks that setting out.

I've been trying to get Asus to release a bios version where you can f'n change the ram timing, so I can finally install my low-voltage ram at a LOWER speed than the 1600Mhz speed, with a dynamic profile, for example. Which that chipset supports.

But getting Asus to respond to that is about as futile as trying to pin a jellyfish to the wall with a nail-gun.

Note that the advertisement for the ram also comes from the retailer, not Corsair. Corsair advertises exactly what they sell, which is a chip with a timing table that properly configured bioses will use. In a normal desktop board, this table allows you to simply set the speed, and then the "recommended" timings that allow this speed will magically be set.

On your average laptop, however, this is disabled, as to - to quote Asus support - "ensure that people do not overclock their computers".

Or, as bad luck would have it, so as to make sure people are unable to install their ram-upgrades, add ram in an empty ram-slot, double the amount of ram, downclock ram, insert low watt ram, or reduce clock-speed dynamically to save battery. All of which, of course, are simply UNNECESSARY and UNDESIRABLE things to do on a laptop.

Clearly, when you buy a laptop, with a chipset that is advertised to support xmp and dynamic clocking, coupled with ram that supports said standard -- then it is reasonable to expect that the manufacturer of the laptop will go out of their way to disable all those functions and lock you out of upgrading or changing the ram, as well as lose several of the advanced functions supposedly supported by the chipset you've paid a lot of money for.

Seriously, though. Thing is that laptop manufacturers arbitrarily set limitations on the bioses they ship with their laptops. They never get pushed on this by review sites, for whatever f.n reason. And they happily ignore you when you contact them as a private person.

So again. The laptop manufacturers and certain retailers will advertise ram timing and setups that are incorrect. Due to the fact that the bioses are hardset to certain specific settings. That cannot be simply overridden by a bios-flash, due to the fairly specific version-tools said manufacturers have access to (i.e., parts of the bios/firmware package will be unavailable even if you have a general toolchain at hand). While the actual hardware in truth supports the functions and the ram-timing, etc. from the beginning.

Honestly, very frustrating. Not in the least because every time someone comes up with this exact idea that the ram is faulty, and that the chipsets don't support said functions. And I then explain what the real reason for lack of support is. This is invariably followed by people looking like question-marks, and people accusing me of harassing their favourite laptop-maker, who they think employ prescient geniuses who program software telepathically with their minds or something.

Anyway. So short version:

1. Ram is fine. Chipset is fine. Hardware is capable.

2. BIOS/firmware is locked. Which causes hardware to be unsupported/unset/incompatible/not properly set up.

Problem is bios. Problem is the laptop manufacturer's guy with the amibios toolchain being an .

 

actually, I've heard rumours that the ICs that corsair uses for these modules aren't exactly cutting edge like the Samsung 30nm ones. 1866mhz is already a massive stretch for them as they are fabbed on older nodes.
If you want best performance, you can't beat any of the Samsung 30nm ICs, they are very very capable, i've personally gotten my sticks to 2133mhz CL12-12-12-30 at 1.35V. Unfortunately, since I've upgraded to the UEFI BIOS for my w110er I can no longer alter the RAM settings so I can vouch for the Kingston HYperX pnp.
And Kingston really mean it when they say PNP, a lot of companies actually load their advertised profiles in XMP settings so you are totally out of luck if your laptop doesn't allow XMP to be toggled. The profile is actually JEDEC so it will work so long as your CPU's IMC can handle it.
The real beauty is that you can use Thaiphoon burner to alter their JEDEC profiles, whereas most other modules out there are locked.

 

I'm running Prema's bios on my old machine (without UEFI) so I just manually set the timings, this wasn't all that desirable on the new machine since it's £1000+ and under a week old.

In general, I agree fully, I can't exactly comment on Asus since they don't even bother to conform to the MXM standard, but I think when you're buying the more upgradeable machines from MSI/Alienware/Clevo they should be more flexible on ALL aspects - we shouldn't need an unlocked bios to achieve the things we want.

IMHO If a manufacturer released a fully unlocked warranty voiding bios "use at your own risk" + a tool or 3 and some basic knowledge of the EC to enable us to adjust our fan profiles and other stuff - that would be it, market domination.......... why they haven't done it yet IDK....

 

Because some idiot will bork something on their mobo with the fully unlocked BIOS (12V to CPU or RAM), and then whine like a little kid all over on the internet.

Or flash the original BIOS back after breaking something, and clog up the RMA process.

 

..Well. It's really the other way around. Set the bios to obey .. widely used since 1998 or something like that.. jdec table timing. And retailers and laptop manufacturers would reduce their rma mass by many, many instances.

Because what we have now is.. also in this thread, but elsewhere, and it's a very common thing you see on forums. For every laptop-manufacturer, there's always something about this going on. Where people try to change the "standard" amount of ram. And they get an error, the thing doesn't boot.

And then they complain about the ram. Either because that's what the retailer will say is the problem, or because some support dude will insist their laptop is incompatible with such and such type of ram.

The laptop manufacturers' solution to this problem is then to simply disallow changing ram altogether. So they can finally become like Apple, which is the golden standard in the industry. For whatever f'n reason I can't really seem to wrap my head around.

But a very simple, very easy, very safe - indeed safer and less expensive in the end - process of handling this than locking the ram timing to some idiotic number from the factory by means of locking the bios out of functions for example intel do advertise with -- does exist.

This isn't rocket science either. And will simply allow people to change the ram and have the ram choose the proper voltage, timing and speed. Without needing the user to actually set it manually. Which does, invariably, end up - even with experts - cause issues. That's why the "spd"-timing, or the jdec tables exist. To let people simply plug the ram in and let the system configure it.

That was in 1998, or earlier than that. Now it's 2013. And.. well.. this is where we're at. Where laptop manufacturers and resellers think locking bios to one speed, one ram-timing, and locking out dynamic clocking functions, etc. - is less expensive for them in the end.

While they're going for fusing ram-chips to the motherboard in the future. Which, as we know, is not a very efficient or cost-efficient way to do it. If then one chip breaks, the entire computer needs to be switched out, and the motherboard scrapped. Etc.

 

And that would constitute as fraud.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I recall coming across a thread filled with photos of people trying to cheat the RMA process. There was a photo of a returned GTX 580... That was actually a sawed-off late 1980's GPU covered with the GTX 580's shroud attached.

Another photo showed someone trying to RMA a GPU shroud with a bag of nails under it. The GPU and the heatsink was missing.