In a creepy tale better suited to Halloween, we're hearing whisperings that a fair few Elpida hyper memory chips have been reportedly arriving dead on arrival on customers' doorsteps. *Scream!*

Elpida memory chips are thought to be best in class at the moment, being the only chips capable of 2000 CAS7 on just 1.65V, but it seems something is going terribly wrong. Dozens of people are reporting their brand spanking new memory was found dead in its packaging, with the cause a mystery.

The chips apparently work fine when they are tested at the factory, but somewhere between packaging and opening, fatality strikes.

We've heard RMA rates - the percentage of all systems returned under warranty that are suspected of being defective - have shot up by 50 per cent for high end memory kits based on Elpida chips, a problem we're told Elpida has been made aware of.

Elpida has not replied to our queries on the subject but there are rumours the firm is recalling recent batches which have been failing at voltages as low as 1.5V. There is also speculation Elpida is trying to replace those chips as soon as it can with newer DDR3 chips which both clock and perform better.