My $30 thermal camera for my phone found a hot RAM stick in under a minute

I was dealing with random shutdowns on a gaming PC and the usual checks came up empty. Grabbed a cheap Seek Thermal Compact for my phone, pointed it at the board, and one of the DDR4 sticks was glowing way hotter than the others. Replaced that stick and the system's been solid for a month now. Anyone else use one of these little phone gadgets for quick diagnostics?

3 comments

3 Comments

laura_green821mo ago

My old Seek Compact found a bad capacitor that way.

cora1771mo ago

My old Fluke multimeter was always my go-to for checking caps. I found the thermal cameras better for spotting hot spots on boards.

anderson.jason19d ago

That's a great find. Did you check if the hot stick was in a specific slot, like maybe the one furthest from the CPU? I wonder if some boards have weaker voltage regulation on certain channels. @laura_green82 mentioned finding a bad cap, which makes me think these cameras are best for spotting parts that are just straight up failing, not subtle issues. I'm tempted to get one just for checking on my old gear.