Is Asus P5B-Deluxe incompatible with DDR667 memory?

[AstroGuardian]

I just ordered the Asus P5B-Deluxe board but heard from colleagues that this board does not boot with many different DDR667 modules.

What do you think? Is this true or is it something else?

Thanks

 

[Damn Dirty Ape]

Wondering the same, I have 667 stuff for now and I see it says Ram standard 800.. Up for some exposure.

 

[Trashman]

Been eye-ballin that board as well, from my understanding with asus boards you have to adjust memory voltage according to specs of your memory, i believe default voltage is like 1.8v, so if your memory is rated 2.0v or above, you may have some issues. Could be what your "colleagues" are running into.

 

[brently]

Here's a data point that will hopefully be helpful to some.

Setup:

ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP P965 775 (rev 1.03G)
Kingston DII667 KVR667D2N5/1G (2x)
ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP P965 775
VGA ASUS N EN7600GT/2DHT/256M R
Antec 500W HE power supply

Initially I got "Bad Bios Checksum", and "Intel ucode loading error - flash chip not supported" messages at start up. It was sporadic, so no way to get a handle on the cause. (Of course I triple checked the install).
The system would boot once in a while, enough to update the bios (to 1004), and then get Suse 10.2 installed.

Seems like rebooting (for the install) would work reliably, but not starting from the power-off state - a cold boot. In the latter case, I'd often just get fans, no beeps, no video.

Trolling here and elsewhere, I focused on memory as the problem. I played with the settings (the bios has an 'auto' setting, so I set it to DDR2-667, then DDR2-533 - hoping to get stability). I also played with the voltage rating on the memory - changing from auto to 1.8, to 1.85, and back to auto.

Numerous times I reset the vram - almost convinced myself that doing this would cause it to boot.

Many times I received a message at boot: "overclocking failed, F1 to enter bios, F2 to reset". This was a bit confusing as I was doing no overclocking and, aside from the few attempts at controlling memory speeds/voltage, only changing the clock (time&date).

After calling Kingston for help (a pleasant experience, I might add), I methodically tested the memory - one stick at a time in each of the memory slots. Initially the first stick (stick A) would work 80% of the time in slot A1, not at all in A2/B1, and 50% results in B2. Stick B - wouldn't work at all. Stick A+B together got me back to < 50% booting probability.

At this point (2 weeks into the process) I'm out of ideas. I have an RMA # from NewEgg and am resigned to sending the mobo back. Unfortunately I don't have a pile of used parts (DDR2 memory, PCIe video cards, etc) to do further debugging.

Not sure whether I'll try a different board, or the same one again.

 

[Shimmishim]

Not true. It will boot with 667 ram.

I had some crucial 2x1 gig 10th anniversary ddr2-667 or pc2-5300 and it booted fine.

edit:

you might have to boot with one stick first though, then change the voltage to default (2.0+) and then stick the other stick in. that always worked for me.