"Chris Hedlund" said:
I need some help with memory configuration on my K8V SE Deluxe board. I
first bought two 25bMB chips and it worked fine. I then added a 512MB chip
and it won't boot up. It will boot up with 512 and one 256 for total of 768
MB - best I can do.
Then I went and messed with the memory config in BIOS and won't boot at all.
Anyone can help?
Thanks,
Chris
(e-mail address removed)
Unplug the computer and "clear the CMOS". The procedure should be in the
manual (jumper named CLRTC ?). You are unplugging the computer, to
ensure there is no +5VSB running, to damage anything. That should fix
up the memory settings so you can at least enter the BIOS.
As for your original problem, have you followed the Table 1 in
the manual, entitled "Recommended memory configurations" ?
That table is representative of the limitations of the Socket754
Athlon64 processor. It cannot run three slots of memory at
DDR400. You should be able to run two double sided DDR400 sticks
in slot 1 and slot 3, for example. (I think one of the MSI boards
has a slightly different table than the Asus one. Asus has copied
the table as provided by AMD. The table in the MSI manual I looked
at, had some slightly different entries, of maybe some stuff they
tested in the lab or something. In any case, experiment with
DDR DIMM voltage and slot locations, as the results will vary
with individual processors. Since the memory controller is on
the processor, trying a different processor could give different
results with your memory too.)
In terms of the colored DIMM slots, slot 1 has its own address
bus, and slot 2 and slot 3 share a second address bus. The
data bus is common to all three slots, making this a single
channel board. Since Slot 1 has better address drive, you might
put the 512MB stick in there, and then experiment with whatever
you can get away with, in slot 2 and slot 3. If the 256MB
modules are single bank modules, then double, single, single
at DDR400 might work. Electrically, that is roughly equivalent
to the double, none, double at DDR400 listed in the manual (
eighteenth entry in the table).
Test the memory configurations with memtest86 from memtest.org .
That is a test program that runs without an OS installed. It can
boot the computer from a floppy diskette, or from an ISO format
CD. The floppy version contains a floppy formatter, and will
format a blank floppy for you, placing the necessary test code
on the disk. Then, you make sure the computer to be tested,
has the floppy first in the boot order, so the floppy will be
used to boot. Let the test run for a couple of passes error
free, before concluding the memory config is stable enough to
take a chance booting Windows. If it is late at night, leave
the test running until the next morning.
After you are back in your favorite OS, try to run a program like
Prime95 (torture test mode) as a final test. That is a good
stressor for the CPU and the memory.
HTH,
Paul
