RAM Problem

[Matthew Brawn]

Ive got a self built Pc with
Asus K8V Deluxe
256 DDR Ram pc3200 400MHz, CL3 (one stick)
200Gig SATA HDD
128mg FX5200 Video Card
Last month i got a new stick of RAM the same type and company, when i put it
in Bioss says 512 windows loaded and just before the welcome screen (windows
xp sp2) there will be a black screen with a mouse arrow then 3 secounds
later it reboots and goes around and around, the new ram workes by its self,
there are 3 slots on the MoBo, and ive put them in every order and nothing
working, tryed installing XP and repairing but it freezes before it starts
doing any work, ive tryed with out all the extras (modem, sound, network, tv
card) and that didnt help.) i tryed differetn stick of ram and same
problem., safe mode stops loading at Drvmain.sdb, all the other same modes,
vga modes donst gt anyware, they all make the PC reboot.
I NEED HELP, ANY IDEAS?

 

[Sleepy]

Ive got a self built Pc with
Asus K8V Deluxe
256 DDR Ram pc3200 400MHz, CL3 (one stick)
200Gig SATA HDD
128mg FX5200 Video Card
Last month i got a new stick of RAM the same type and company, when i put
it in Bioss says 512 windows loaded and just before the welcome screen
(windows xp sp2) there will be a black screen with a mouse arrow then 3
secounds later it reboots and goes around and around, the new ram workes
by its self, there are 3 slots on the MoBo, and ive put them in every
order and nothing working, tryed installing XP and repairing but it
freezes before it starts doing any work, ive tryed with out all the extras
(modem, sound, network, tv card) and that didnt help.) i tryed differetn
stick of ram and same problem., safe mode stops loading at Drvmain.sdb,
all the other same modes, vga modes donst gt anyware, they all make the PC
reboot.
I NEED HELP, ANY IDEAS?

If Ive read that right; either stick on its own works okay but put together
causes
the rebooting? Have you tried one stick in all three slots to make sure the
board
is good. You will have tried slot 1 no doubt but slot 2 or 3 on its own?
try a program called cpu-z - it analyzes both CPU and RAM and shows CAS
and TRAS settings for the RAM - it'll give you an idea of how they compare
and they may not be identical.
Secondly you can try running memtest on each stick to guarantee its good.
hope this helps.

 

[Fitz]

Try upping the DDR voltage (in the BIOS) by .1V and see if that helps with
the stability.

Fitz

 

[GT]

Ive got a self built Pc with
Asus K8V Deluxe
256 DDR Ram pc3200 400MHz, CL3 (one stick)
200Gig SATA HDD
128mg FX5200 Video Card
Last month i got a new stick of RAM the same type and company, when i put
it in Bioss says 512 windows loaded and just before the welcome screen
(windows xp sp2) there will be a black screen with a mouse arrow then 3
secounds later it reboots and goes around and around, the new ram workes
by its self, there are 3 slots on the MoBo, and ive put them in every
order and nothing working, tryed installing XP and repairing but it
freezes before it starts doing any work, ive tryed with out all the extras
(modem, sound, network, tv card) and that didnt help.) i tryed differetn
stick of ram and same problem., safe mode stops loading at Drvmain.sdb,
all the other same modes, vga modes donst gt anyware, they all make the PC
reboot.
I NEED HELP, ANY IDEAS?

Sounds like you have 2 memory modules that are not compatible - the timings
need to be the same, or the PC needs to be forced to run at the slowest
settings. Your original RAM is PC3200 and CL3. Your new RAM therefore needs
also to be CL3, or the PC needs to be forced to run both RAMs at CL3. I
would guess that your new RAM is actually CL2.5 (faster) and the PC is
trying to run them both at that, but the slower (CL3) module is failing. I
would suggest going into the BIOS and chaning the memory timings from
default / auto to manual and set the CAS timing to CL3.

The PC3200 (200MHz DDR) is the maximum speed rating for this RAM, so can be
mixed with other speeds of memory, always slowing down to the slowest common
speed.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Sounds like you have 2 memory modules that are not compatible - the
timings need to be the same, or the PC needs to be forced to run at the
slowest settings. Your original RAM is PC3200 and CL3. Your new RAM
therefore needs also to be CL3, or the PC needs to be forced to run both
RAMs at CL3. I would guess that your new RAM is actually CL2.5 (faster)
and the PC is trying to run them both at that, but the slower (CL3) module
is failing. I would suggest going into the BIOS and chaning the memory
timings from default / auto to manual and set the CAS timing to CL3.

The PC3200 (200MHz DDR) is the maximum speed rating for this RAM, so can
be mixed with other speeds of memory, always slowing down to the slowest
common speed.

I agree. When the motherboard is checking the speed of the RAM, it is only
looking at the SPD chip in the RAM stick on the first slot. If this is the
faster RAM, the computer will crash. So the easiest solution would be to
swap the sticks the other way around so that the slower one is in the first
slot.

ss.

 

[kony]

I agree. When the motherboard is checking the speed of the RAM, it is only
looking at the SPD chip in the RAM stick on the first slot. If this is the
faster RAM, the computer will crash. So the easiest solution would be to
swap the sticks the other way around so that the slower one is in the first
slot.

.... only on a buggy bios. A motherboard is "supposed" to
check the SPD on all modules and choose the highest timings
of any installed modules (highest meaning numbers,
translating into slowest access).

Even so, when the motherboard "SPD" (or "auto" if there is
no SPD-named setting), the next step is either to replace
both modules (since they don't work together), replace the
board with one that can run both stabily, or manually choose
slower timings for memory in the bios menu.

To the OP:
Memtest86 should be ran for several hours to check stability
before and after any memory changes, the OS not booted till
it passes several hours of memtest86.