Pulling my hair out!

cymro1170

I'm pulling my hair out today!

I'd bought some memory modules 2 weeks ago, which were "incompatible" with my motherboard. After a week of emailing the company for a refund or swap for "compatible" memory, they have agreed to a refund.

They also advised me which memory was compatible with my motherboard.
I ordered 2 of these modules and they arrived today....

Way Hey!!!

......I'm getting the same problem with these modules!
So, I'm pulling my hair out this morning!

Should I just spend even more money on a new motherboard which will take my Processor and memory modules?

Or, the way I'm feeling right now, should I just throw the !!!!!! lot in the bin!

I'm getting really stressed over this now...
I need a PC for various projects, and at the moment I'm using my laptop, which isn't really much use other than for surfing the internet, emailing, and document writing.

AAARRRGGGHHHHH.................

Joe_Bloggs

I'm sorry to hear of your trouble. What motherboard do you have (plus bios version) and what memory do you have. In what way does your memory module problem present itself ? Presumably you had some existing memory before you bought the new memory. Is incompatability with this a factor ? Can you test your memory modules one at a time?. Memtest86 is very good for this as you don't risk corrupting an existing operating system.
J_B.

cymro1170

Thanks for your reply.

My motherboard is a K7N2 - which I bought a couple of years ago with the intention of upgrading my then PC.

I bought a PC instead of upgrading at that time.

My PC has since died, so I decided to use the Motherboard I had to finish building the PC.
I purchased a new HDD (80Gb), AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 512Mb of GeIL PC2700 memory (Which is being sent back)

I have now also bought 512Mb of Crucial Memory.

wolfman

What do you mean "incompatible"? They don't fit? Just don't work?

It's an nForce2 mobo so you may be having problems with the density of the ram. I remember reading it'll only take certain configurations.

Joe_Bloggs

There seem to be a few bios changes since you bought your motherboard according to here. At what speed are you trying to run your memory ? It might be a good idea to underclock (reduce fsb) for stability before attempting anything with the bios. You never said how you know that the memory is to blame for your problems. What was the pressumed cause of failure of the dead PC ?
J_B. (Memtest86!).

PS you might try the forum at https://www.nforcershq.com eg. here.
Read the top sticky. I was J_B on that site.

cymro1170

This is my motherboard.

I had asked about the "incompatible" memory on the MSI forum.
Overclockers UK advised me that the Corsair Modules I have since bought are compatible.

I have a D-Bracket attached to the motherboard and the LEDs were reporting a memory fault.

I'm really at the end of my tether with the damned thing.

CIS

Have you tried the memory in another PC ?, it could be a faulty motherboard as it would be unusual for a modern board to reject two different makes of RAM.

wolfman

Taken from the MSI website:

"NOTE: nForce2 does not support x4 memory for 1GB but it could support other density of dram chip such as x 8, x16..."

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=436

Your board can take up to PC3200, I think you may have to check the density of the ram on each module though.

cymro1170

Thanks CIS.

The other PC doesn't use the same memory - it's an old one.
I've tried 4 modules (2xGeil and 2xCrucial) In the 3 memory slots.

cymro1170

wolfman wrote:

Taken from the MSI website:

"NOTE: nForce2 does not support x4 memory for 1GB but it could support other density of dram chip such as x 8, x16..."

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=436

Your board can take up to PC3200, I think you may have to check the density of the ram on each module though.

All the modules were PC2700

wolfman

At what density though?

The density relates to the number of chips on a memory module. From what the MSI site said, your motherboard doesn't support ram made up from 4 banks, only 8 and 16.

So in your example of 512mb, if it's a 512mb module made up from 4x128mb chips, then your motherboard probably won't accept it. If it were 512mb made up of 8x64mb then it probably would. That's my understanding from the sentence I quoted off the MSI website.