Epox 8k7a's problem with memory damage?

[Merlin74]

I assembled a system last august with Athlon Tbird 1.33G+ EPOX 8k7a mb+2x 256M Crucial DDR.
But on March 28, my first stick of memory died. I removed it out and the computer worked well with the other stick. On April 18, the other stick of memory died too. The computer can't boot into win2k and end up with blue screen,the same problem as the first time.
I checked my power supply(300W carried with Enlight CASE) and it seems working well(3.38V,4.96V,12.30V). So I suspect it's the EPOX motherboard that damaged the memory since the possiblity for two sticks of memory to die is extremely small.
My question is if there are other people who experienced the same problem as mine?
And more unfortunately, I bought the EPOX 8k7a from newegg and they don't provide warranty while EPOX seems have no warranty for those customers not buying from them directly or from TigerDirect and Fry's.
So my sencond question is how you handled the warranty with EPOX 8k7a if you bought it from Newegg?
Thanks for your help.

 

[J3anyus]

Hmm...I've had an 8K7A+ with two sticks of 256MB Crucial PC2100 since November, never had any problems with the memory. It sounds like you either got really unlucky and both sticks of memory died, or your board is screwed up somehow. I dunno, weird problem that you've got.

 

[bb630]

I have the exact same system as you (also purchased from Newegg) except that I have an Athlon 1.4G Tbird. My system just died last night. During the previous couple of weeks though, I had been experiencing intermittent problems. A couple times the computer appeared to be in sleep mode, but would not respond to the keyboard or mouse. After a reboot, the machine operated normally. Once when I came back to it, I was greeted by a blue screen. Again, after rebooting, everything appeared normal. Then last night, I was working on it and all of a sudden the screen goes blank. I look at the case and the power light and the disk activity light is on. I tried the reset button and it just lights up one of my CD leds and that's it. The power button does nothing. I unplug, plug in, power on, and the BIOS screen appears but hangs right after the memory check. I tried rebooting again, but this time the BIOS doesn't even begin loading.

I took a couple PCI cards out and checked all the connections, but nothing worked. I didn't try removing one of the memory sticks since it couldn't even load the BIOS at that point (and because it was late and I was running out of new expletives to use). I'll try swapping the memory sticks out and a few other things tonight.

As for the Newegg question, I have the same one. I submitted an RMA request this morning and I haven't received a reply yet.

Gee, and I thought my IBM Deskstar GXP drive would be the first thing to go!

 

[o1die]

Epox boards seem to be picky about memory. If the settings aren't right for your ddram, they will beep or give you a blank screen with the curser in the upper left corner.

 

[bb630]

Not that I'm complaining right now but...

I didn't change a thing from last night, I just powered on and it booted OK except that some BIOS settings got lost. I don't know if they got set back to defaults or not, but I know I had to tell it that I don't have a floppy and that it should try booting from the CD instead of a floppy. Other than that though, as I post this, everything looks OK for the moment.

Can somebody shed some light on what may be happening? Could it possibly be an intermittent memory problem?

 

[bb630]

After finally finding the time to figure out what's wrong, I have verified that one of my 256MB Crucial sticks is bad.