Noob problem with ram on socket 754 soltek board. please help me!

TeejayV

Member
Jul 25, 2004
62
0
0
Ok, i'm going to describe my problem below, if anyone can please help me i would greatly appreciate it!


I have the soltek socket 754 board . Here are my specs:

Soltek K8AN2E-GR
AMD 64 3400+ clawhammer
1 stick of Samsung pc3200 generic ram (512mb)
1 stick of Kingston Pc3200 generic Ram (512mb)
1 Stick of OCZ premier series pc3200 ram (512mb) - not in system at the moment
Ati Radeon x800 PRO
Antec Truepower 430w
160 WD ata133 hdd with 8mb cache


i am having very big troubles getting my computer to recognize the ram that i have. I have put them in one at a time, and sometimes the system will boot, but sometimes the system will not recognize the ram.

When i do have the ram recognized, it does not run at 200mhz. instead the ram runs at a 166 speed for a total of 333 for the two of them. it should be running at 400 correct?

when i put in one bar of ram (when it works) i get the ram running at 400 speed. When i add the second, sometimes it will not even boot, but when it does, it runs at 333.

This is a weird problem that i am having. I do not know if the board is having problems recognizing these two brands of ram. I've also put in a 512MB stick of OCZ premier series 3200 single channel ram, and that didn't even recognize it at all. I have tried this stick of ram in another computer and it works fine (the ocz one).

What could be the problem that i am having with these two sticks of ram? I plug them into my other socket 754 board (chaintech board) and they work fine. I've left all the bios options on default, and have not messed around with anything in the bios. In the bios the ram is running at a speed of 166 and not 200, even though i know these sticks of ram are capable of running at 200.

The main problem i am having is that when i take the ram out and move it from slot to slot, sometimes the computer will not boot up. other times it will boot up fine, then i will remove the ram and put it back in the same slot 3 minutes later, and it will not boot up again! then i will put in another bar of ram (the alternate bar) and it will boot up, then i put in the first bar of ram again it will boot up, then i will put the second bar of ram with the first and the computer will not work!

even if i'm running at 333 speeds instead of 400, i am afraid to mess around with the ram anymore. I'm not sure if it's a defective motherboard, or i'm doing something wrong. Please help me!

Thanks in advance.
 

wyrd

Member
Oct 8, 2004
29
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0
I believe this specific board has a problem using two different types of ram at the same time.
 

Fern

Elite Member
Sep 30, 2003
26,907
174
106
I'm curious if loosening the ram's timing (ex. from Cas 2.5 -> 3.0) would allow them to "play nice togther". Have you tried that?
 

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
248
106
The nForce 3 chipset only supports one double-sided dimm. Your 512's are probably both double sided, in which case when it boots at all you should consider yourself lucky. After looking up your motherboard, it seems to not state this fact in the manual, which is a no-no on their part, but this is a known issue with the chipset. It does state this fact in my Epox manual. Your best bet is to either run only one dimm, or find some single-sided dimms.