How I almost fried my new mobo

[meltdown75]

Hi. My rig is in my sig, I just have a question which is probably a no-brainer, so I hope someone can help me.

About a week ago, a co-worker came up to me, and, knowing that I am "into computers", produced a stick of ram and says "here ya go - i bought this and it's not compatible with my motherboard. you can keep it."

Pretty generous, and although I tried to talk him into returning it for at least an exchange, he insisted I keep it.

It's a 256 meg stick of pc2700 DDR - 333mhz. Now, I have 1 512 meg stick of pc3200 DDR 400 mhz in my system. Temptingly enough, both manufacturers are the same - "Ultra".

Is this ram of any use to me or should I just sell it, or give it to someone who can use it? My mobo has DDR capability but since I only have 1 stick so it is not being utilized as of yet.

I guess my question is: can I use this ram? Thanks.

 

[stelleg151]

Sell it, it will reduce your 3200 to 2700.

 

[Appledrop]

well, yes you can use it. but it is a trade off. you will lose memory bandwidth (a mix of ddr 400 and ddr 333 will cause all the ram to run at 333 speed). However, youd have 768mb ram.. (obviously).

oops, infact what i say may be totally wrong; what CPU do you have??? if its an athlon xp you may be able to get away with it perfectly.... give your cpu model first pls

 

[meltdown75]

No problem - its the Athlon XP 2700+, 333fsb (thoroughbred?). Right now the cpu & ram are each synced @ 166mhz.

 

[meltdown75]

come back!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: meltdown75
No problem - its the Athlon XP 2700+, 333fsb (thoroughbred?). Right now the cpu & ram are each synced @ 166mhz.

Since you aren't overclocking and are wisely running synch already you can just add it and it should be fine.

 

[meltdown75]

thanks man, i appreciate it!

free memory, pretty tough to beat eh?

 

[meltdown75]

ok, now i'm scared sh*tless

i put it in slot 3 (slot 1 had my 512); no post. i removed it, still no post.

OMG is my mobo screwed? please help - ahhhhhhhhhhh!

 

[meltdown75]

i'm freaking out, someone please assist

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Did you unplug it or turn it off from the PSU switch first? Clear the CMOS?

 

[meltdown75]

i unplugged all power before i put it in. right now i have the CMOS battery out and it has been out for about 10 mins. I am going to try booting again. Wish me luck and thanks!

 

[meltdown75]

ok. back on line. holy SH!T why did it do that? i just sprouted about 164 new greys. I guess I should just toss this stick of ram in the garb. Man oh man, what a friggin frigger!

 

[meltdown75]

this is all my fault. thanks DaPunisher for helping me, and the others

I shouldn't have tried the free ram i got. 1) The original owner put it into a motherboard that didn't support it. 2) He smelled smoke and it rocked his mobo's world - he had to get a whole new mobo. 3) i am dumb, dumb, dumb - and lucky to still have a working PC.

I learned my lesson - if it ain't broke don't fix it, and if you want DDR, for pete's sake buy the matching stick and do it the right way!

I'll take any and all slaps with trouts. thanks again all

 

[Andres3605]

just rma the ram stick it should be lifetime warranty and then tri it again

 

[blacktankofhopelessness]

Originally posted by: meltdown75
this is all my fault. thanks DaPunisher for helping me, and the others

I shouldn't have tried the free ram i got. 1) The original owner put it into a motherboard that didn't support it. 2) He smelled smoke and it rocked his mobo's world - he had to get a whole new mobo. 3) i am dumb, dumb, dumb - and lucky to still have a working PC.

I learned my lesson - if it ain't broke don't fix it, and if you want DDR, for pete's sake buy the matching stick and do it the right way!

I'll take any and all slaps with trouts. thanks again all

1) I hope you're aware of the fact that you have to short the CMOS jumper for about 30 seconds after removing the battery? Simply removing the battery will not clear the CMOS.

2) See my sig. I am running three sticks of RAM. One PC3200 512MB and two PC2700 256MB. I have zero trouble despite the fact that the PC2700's are Samsung and the PC3200 is a Twinmos one. Running these at 176fsb (my A7V8X kinda limits my OC) and passing memtest with flying colours.

3) Why did you put the 2nd stick in DIMM 3 instead of 2? Don't know if that would've made a difference, but I just don't get the reasoning behind that decision.

 

[meltdown75]

Originally posted by: blacktankofhopelessness

1) I hope you're aware of the fact that you have to short the CMOS jumper for about 30 seconds after removing the battery? Simply removing the battery will not clear the CMOS.

2) See my sig. I am running three sticks of RAM. One PC3200 512MB and two PC2700 256MB. I have zero trouble despite the fact that the PC2700's are Samsung and the PC3200 is a Twinmos one. Running these at 176fsb (my A7V8X kinda limits my OC) and passing memtest with flying colours.

3) Why did you put the 2nd stick in DIMM 3 instead of 2? Don't know if that would've made a difference, but I just don't get the reasoning behind that decision.

- Well, as far as the battery removal, I took it out and left it out for a while, and when I put it back in, it posted. So it did something I guess? (LOL damn i'm new) ... my BIOS was all back to default settings, and I had to reset my clock. So was the CMOS cleared?
- Perhaps the A7V8X has different recommendations than the A7N8X for installing DIMMs... The A7N8X recommends installing in slots 1 & 3, 2 & 3, or 1, 2, & 3. So I tried 1 & 3 first. This was an attempt to utilize the dual channel feature.

At any rate, for now I'm leaving it on my desk and keeping it out of the case. In the future I'll just buy the matching 512 and go that route. I am thinking perhaps the stick is dead due to what happened with it with the previous owner. Now that I have removed it and everything is fine, I don't think further experimenting would hurt the mobo, but... I'm kinda gun-shy. I appreciate the discussion BTOH.

 

[blacktankofhopelessness]

Well, it sounds as if your CMOS was cleared after all... most mobos have a jumper that you need to short before putting the battery back in. But hey, I'm no Mr know-it-all ;-)

As for Dual-channel you have to have two identical sticks of RAM for it to work! One 512 PC3200 and a 256 PC2700 will never utilize Dual-channel, no matter what DIMM's you put them in. It won't hurt your mobo though. Get one of those Dual-channel kits would be my recommendation.

 

[meltdown75]

Thanks again BTOH

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Here's the deal, when you pop the battery with the system unplugged or turned off from the PSU so there is no 5v standby power, the CMOS loses the power it needs to hold the last settings so it does clear the CMOS aand reset defaults.

Also, on nF2 boards dual channel works with odd sized sticks, but only to the limit of the smallest stick. So it will use both 64bit controllers to address the first 256mb of each stick, and when it needs more memory it will address the last 256mb of that 512mb stick in single channel.

 

[villagepeople]

On my FIC KT-748 MoBo w/AthlonXP 2800, I used different brand DDR Memory, total 1 Gig.
Memory - 1 : Kingstron Value Ram 512MB, PC3200
Memory - 2 : Patriot 512MB, PC2700
Memory - 3 : Empty.

I used it for three months, found no problem.
Now my MoBo is bad for some reason. I don't think Memory is a reason for that.

 

[CubanlB]

yeah, trying to get dual channel with different memory sizes will NEVER work. But, like you said, that stick is most likely garbage if it was in a little incident as you have said. Getting a matched pair (of memory) is the best idea if you wanna run dual channel.