Beeping motherboard

[Retina]

I am a novice building my first PC and have ran into a serious problem. When I try to boot up to make sure the motherboard and video card are operating correctly, I get one long beep repeated continuously from the mobo speaker (with no display on the monitor). Although I have not found the meaning of a single beep for Phoenix BIOS, I have gathered that such a beep means that something is wrong with the memory. I tried two different sticks of PC2100 DDR RAM (512 and 128) with the same result. Does this mean something is wrong with the RAM slots or is something else going on? I have tried about everything I can think of (connecting all drives, PCI cards), which isn't much. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Specs:

Abit KR7A-Raid ATA133 KT266A
Phoenix BIOS
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
512 or 128 MB (PC2100 DDR)
3DFX 32MB VODOO 4 4500 PCI W/B

 

[virulent]

1 beep in the phoenix bios is indicative of ram problems. are u sure the ddr ram is seated properly? on my mobo, even if the two clips supporting the ram snap snugly i still have to put some more downward pressure for the ram to seat properly.

 

[Retina]

I think they're properly seated, although I have my doubts. Does the upper part of the notch on the bottom of the RAM fit all the way down into the slot? Right now it doesn't, but I'm weary of using more force to get it all the way down.

 

[Retina]

<< , but I'm weary of using more force to get it all the way down. >>



Excuse me, "wary".

 

[virulent]

the ram is keyed and should only fit one way, unless you were trying to be superman. um i guess you can peek your head in and see if the contacts appear level to the top of the slot.

edit: i cant see the notch protruding from the top of the slot in my setup, but then again we have different boards. are the tabs for the ram secure and perpendicular to the mobo?

 

[JC]

Remember there was a fella here not too long ago who showed us you could get the DDR sticks in backwards! As I recall, he had some wierd memory count problems
followed by some cooking.

 

[Retina]

 

[virulent]

the ram is keyed and should only fit one way "should" was the key word. i guess there goes our superman. but yah ive seen some very peculiar things.

 

[Retina]

I'm fairly certain I have the orientation correct, but I never was comfortable with seeing so much space in that notch. I'll check things again when I get home.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Memory is supposed to go fully down into the slot, and the slip will lock into the notches on each side of the ram.. look at the little bit cut out of the bottom of the DIMM, and look at the DIMM socket.. line em up, and shove til it clicks twice.

Josh

 

[dpierce]

Are you sure it's only one beep?

I just bought a new video card, and was getting one long beep, followed by two vey short ones - I almost couldn't hear them. I was also not getting any video. My memory was woring quite well - you shouldn't have to push memory any harder than your video card, BTW. Turned out the video card was a DOA. A replacement fixed the problem.

 

[RustyNale]

From what I'm seeing on the forums, DDR ram is much harder--needs alot more pressure-- to seat than sdram. The first time I installed mine I'd thought I'd snapped something, it was only the catches "snapping" into lock position. If you're wary of using too much pressure, take the mobo out and lay it on a thin pc of foam on a flat surface and try it that way. Check out some of the posts--some people swore that they'd cracked their boards getting the ram in all the way. Mine wasn't quite that bad, but definitely stiffer than sdram.

 

[Retina]

Thanks for the tips. Virulent was right, I just didn't have the RAM completely seated. Instead of putting the RAM into the slot then lifting the taps to latch in place, I pushed the RAM down (quite hard) until the tabs snapped into place by themselves. That did the trick. Hard to believe a simple problem caused me so much grief.

Cheers.