Here's a stumper about RAM

Slugbait · Post by **Slugbait** » Fri Mar 21, 2003 12:28 am

I have an Asus P4B533 mobo with a Northwood 1.6a overclocked to 2.4.

Everything has been fine for months with a single 512 stick of Samsung PC2700 (on generic PCB).

I bought two more sticks of 512 PC2700 RAM, this time Crucial from NewEgg.

If one stick of Crucial is installed, I boot just fine, and Windows sees a gig of memory. Doesn't matter if the Samsung RAM is in bank 0 or bank 1.

But if all three sticks are installed, I get a "memory check failed" error, and cannot boot. Doesn't matter if the Samsung is in any of the three banks.

Yes, I clocked down. That didn't make a difference.

My BIOS is 1004. I was hoping a BIOS upgrade might fix this, but I may never know...USA and Europe download links are both 404, the Global link won't finish the 350K download, and the China download is an invalid ZIP file.

Any ideas?

smb · Post by **smb** » Fri Mar 21, 2003 12:44 am

you probably have a motherboard that;

1: requires buffered memory if you use over 1 gig of ram

or

2: It just doesn't allow to use all three slots with 2700 type ram.

Slugbait · Post by **Slugbait** » Fri Mar 21, 2003 1:26 am

Yer right...dammit. I found several other links about max 2 DIMM slots and unbuffered memory. Expensive mistake on my part...I'm just too friggin' greedy when it comes to RAM... ("He who dies with the most RAM, wins")

On the plus side, Crucial went up $8 a stick the other day, so maybe I could unload a stick and break even on egay...still, I only have a gig when I really wanted 1.5...