HELP with 3200+/ K7N2 Delta-ILSR & pc3200(400)

[borden]

This is my dilemma. (Besides being a newby)

I recently built a pc with a 3200+ Athalon chip and the MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR as my mobo, I added 2 chips of Kingston Hyper X DDR ram 512mb .
The ram is 400 fsb, the mobo supports 400 fsb and the cpu is also suppose to be able to support 400.

Why am I not able to post with this mix, but it will boot and operate just fine with pc2700 333fsb ram???

I have installed the latest bios update for the board, and tried using Corsair pc3200 with the same outcome. In fact, when I try to post with one chip of either the Kingston or the Corsair pc3200, the chip is only recognized as being a 256 mb and not 512 if it gets that far in the posting???

I installed both brands of ram in the manner which the mobo manual has suggested, to be able receive the DDR Dual channel benefits but with no success???

Both sets of ram work perfectly fine in another machine.



Hope someone can help me nail this one.

 

[Gerbil333]

I can tell you the problem: You're using a K7N2 :disgust:

I had one. It was junk. Seriously, it's just a really, really picky model. It took a lot of work to get it stable, and even then it was flaky. I recommend RMA'ing it and getting either an Asus A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 or an Abit NF7-S 2.0.

This is my dilemma. (Besides being a newby)..........Athalon

That ^^^ shows it It's "ATHLON"! There are NOT two A's!

In fact, when I try to post with one chip of either the Kingston or the Corsair pc3200, the chip is only recognized as being a 256 mb and not 512 if it gets that far in the posting???

Do you have 2 256mb sticks? If so, that'd make sense...one stick of 256mb RAM = 256mb. If not, then RMA that board fast since the RAM works fine in other boards.

I installed both brands of ram in the manner which the mobo manual has suggested, to be able receive the DDR Dual channel benefits but with no success???

How can you be sure it isn't working? You won't notice the difference. It's about 1-5% in performance, and that's nearly impossible to notice without benchmarks. If you put one stick of RAM in the first slot and one stick in the third slot, then dual channel is enabled...there's nothing else to it. That's the simplest way (leaving the middle slot open and filling the other two). You could also put them in slots 2 and 3, but 1 and 3 is generally the most stable.