3rd DIMM slot

[Jonny]

AOpen AX4GE-N motherboard. Has 3 RAM slots for plain old DDR. Bios auto
setting was driving original RAM @266MHz or PC2100, 512MB.

Went to crucial website, said motherboard would take PC3200, 400MHz. Bought
two 512MB modules, single sided. Installed both at slots 1 and 2. Bios
still ran RAM @266MHz. Saw both at 1GB total The only manual setting was
the same for speed. Looked at old RAM, its PC2700, double sided.

Tried the old RAM in slot 3, not recognized. Moved new RAM to slots 2 and
3, left out old RAM. PC only saw 512MB.

How can I use all 3 RAM slots on this motherboard?

.............
Jonny

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Find the motherboard manual from the AOpen website and see what it says.

 

[Bob]

AOpen AX4GE-N motherboard. Has 3 RAM slots for plain old DDR. Bios auto
setting was driving original RAM @266MHz or PC2100, 512MB.

Went to crucial website, said motherboard would take PC3200, 400MHz. Bought
two 512MB modules, single sided. Installed both at slots 1 and 2. Bios
still ran RAM @266MHz. Saw both at 1GB total The only manual setting was
the same for speed. Looked at old RAM, its PC2700, double sided.

Tried the old RAM in slot 3, not recognized. Moved new RAM to slots 2 and
3, left out old RAM. PC only saw 512MB.

How can I use all 3 RAM slots on this motherboard?

............
Jonny

It is an industry specification that DDR400 supports only two DIMM and
DDR333 supports three DIMM.

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Your manual:

ftp://ftp.aopen.com/pub/manual/mb/ax4gen/ax4gen-ol-e.pdf

(about 4.4 MB). The memory configuration suggests that the board works best
with RAM in the first 2 slots, if it's PC2700. I presume the same would
apply to PC3200.

It's not unusual for mainboards to not support filling all slots, due to
signal limitations.

If you have a 533 MHz FSB (front side bus) CPU, and you run the RAM at the
normal synchronous data rate, it will be at DDR266 (PC2100) rates. It may be
possible to run the RAM asynchronously using a memory multiplier; I did that
with an old Asus P4S533. It is, however, a form of overclocking, and I can't
guess whether your board would tolerate it. (The manual supplies little
information on BIOS settings.) As the PC3200 cost less than PC2100, there's
no loss even if you have to run it at PC2100. (You may be able to use
tighter memory timings, set manually in the BIOS.)

Sorry that I can't be more encouraging.


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Jonny]

Motherboard bios is very limited regarding overclocking the cpu and memory.
See no facility for the memory at all. Current cpu is celeron running 24X
on 100MHz bus. Everest says its a Northwood. Recently acquired a Prescott
Pentium that this motherboard does not recognize. Found a motherboard at
premium discount that will take both the memory and new cpu and work with
both. Intend to swap, old mobo, celeron, one ram stick, and turtle beach
sound card will be removed from system.

New motherboard has onboard Firewire, but no ports built-in. Know where I
can purchase the 16 pin receptacle cable and external port assembly for
this?
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-8IPE1000 PRO-G
.............
Jonny

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Sorry, I don't know a good place to buy a Firewire adapter. The few that
I've seen have been included with retail mainboard purchases.

(I've probably seen them at computer shows, but that may not be helpful to
you.)

They're basically inexpensive items. Google found:
http://www.directron.com/firewirepci.html. (The "PCI" bit is misleading.
This is just an adapter that fits in a rear case slot, and provides cabling
to attach to the Firewire and USB headers on the motherboard.) I've never
done business with Directron, but their rating at www.resellerratings.com
isn't horrible, if not as good as Newegg's.

The IEEE 1394 motherboard connector on the above is of the (standard?) 9 pin
variety. Was the "16 pin receptacle" bit an error, or do you need some other
sort of part?

Incidentally, the Gigabyte mainboard that you've got supports dual-channel
memory operation. I suggest exploiting that, particularly if your Prescott
CPU has a 800 MHz FSB with hyperthreading. (It probably won't make a world
of difference in performance, but it couldn't hurt.)