ECS 6100SM suddenly can't post and only beeps

[gbryant]

About a month and a half ago I built two identical computers with ECS 6100sm motherboards and each one with a stick of 512 mb of Kingston ram. I built them together, stress tested them together, and both ran fine. One is still working fine, the other one was going to be a Christmas present but when it was pulled out of a sealed box to be set up it won't turn on, the display doesn't activate at all, and the motherboard gives a regular beeping until you turn it off. I know this is the usual error code for bad ram. However, the ram works fine in other machines and I've tried 2 other sticks of ram that don't work in this machine either. In fact, I've stripped the machine down and rebuilt it twice, stuck the motherboard in another case/PSU and it still does the same thing. The machine spins up all of the drives, fans, etc (when I've run with them connected, I've tried with nothing but mobo + power + ram) but it won't do anything but beep. Did the motherboard just somehow destroy its ram slots sealed in a box? Is there something I'm not thinking of?