Corsair drops failing Elpida memory chips

A COUPLE OF WEEKS BACK, rumblings were heard on tech forums that Elpida hyper memory chips were dying untimely deaths, some not even making it out of their packaging alive.

Elpida, once practically a synonym for "best in class", seems to be having some serious issues with its chips, leading Corsair to drop the firm's DDR3 offerings, with Corsair taking it a step further and recalling all shop inventory of Elpida DDR3 kits.

Corsair announced the move with a pretty damning statement. "We have seen a number of reports across various forums about failures of modules (from Corsair as well as from other memory manufacturers) built with Elpida 'Hyper' RAMs," it read, adding that "through lab testing, we have now been able to reproduce similar failures."

Corsair said it would continue to probe its Elpida memory until the exact cause of the failure could be determined, but said that "although a relatively small percentage of 'Hyper' ICs appear to be affected, the rate of failure is not acceptable to Corsair or to our customers."

"Due to these failures, we will no longer sell Hyper-based modules until the issue can be resolved," declared Corsair, adding that it had asked its retailers to send back any modules currently decomposing on their shelves.

Update: Rumours that Kingston has also dumped Elpida were hotly denied in a statement sent to the INQ today.

"Kingston Technology has enjoyed a long and successful partnership with Elpida and has no plans for this engagement to end," reads the statement.

"The enthusiast DRAM problems some customers are encountering are being looked into and Kingston will ensure that those customers who have experienced problems are given full technical support. We have made several special improvements to our production and test practices to capture and resolve any issues with DRAMs. At this time any inventory issues have been resolved and contained.

"Any customer seeing failures in a system [should] speak to a Kingston Technical Support representative for assistance." [End Update]

The chips - currently the only ones capable of 2000 CAS7 on just 1.65V - apparently work just fine during factory testing, but mysteriously, somewhere between packaging and the punter opening teh packet, fatality strikes, with many kits reported dead on arrival.

The number of high-end memory kits and systems based on Elpida's suicidal chips being sent back under warranty has purportedly shot up by 50 per cent in recent weeks. Elpida, aware of the problem, even started recalling recent batches of memory that apparently were frying at voltages as low as 1.5V.

The products affected by the Corsair recall are said to include those marked: TW3X4G1600C6GTF, TR3X6G1866C7GTF, TR3X6G2000C8GTF, TR3X3G2000C7GTF, and TR3X6G2000C7GTF.

But Corsair didn't kill off hope that the recalled offerings might be resurrected in the near future, saying "We are working on enhancing our manufacturing and testing process to be able to offer these parts again as soon as possible."

Speculation has it that Elpida itself is also trying to replace its soggy chips ASAP, aiming for newer DDR3 chips that both clock and perform better.

Let's hope that Elpida's new chips don't also come down with a bad case of memory failure. µ