Bad memory controller, mobo, both?

[enginepower]

I have a biostar M7NCD pro (based on nforce2 ultra 400 chipset) It has 3 memory slots. (1 "A" slot by itself and 2 "B" slots close together). Got it off ebay so you never know what to expect. Installed 512mb stick of kingmax pc3200 in slot A and no boot, just a black screen. Reseated CPU, vid card and mem, same thing. Moved mem to slot B2 and it booted just fine. Worked fine for about a month. Decided to go with 1gig ram. Bought Mushkin basic pc3200 (2x512). Installed in A and B1(dual channel)...booted fine, got blue screen of death in less than an hour. Memtest shows mem errors. RMA memory, getting same thing. Now, my kingmax mem will work in A but gives errors. Tried mushkin in B1 and B2, worked longer but still errors. Using them one at a time in B2 slot, get errors with one and not other. Is it possible both mem and mobo are faulty? Using Kingmax right now in B2 no probs at all, I think i was even getting errors with kingmax in B1 at times.

 

[C&C Freak 2K]

That should teach you to buy computer hardware (especially important hardware) from eBay.

If both sticks of RAM have been verified to cause errors by themselvesm then you have a motherboard problem.

 

[enginepower]

Problem Solved!!

That should teach you to buy computer hardware (especially important hardware) from eBay.

If both sticks of RAM have been verified to cause errors by themselvesm then you have a motherboard problem.

Well it turns out ebay buy wasn't my problem. The seller swore up and down this was a good motherboard. Turns out the memory was the problem. I've come to a conclusion that nforce2 ultra 400 is picky about memory. See others with asus board using same chipset (A7N8X or something like that) having same problem. Wished the mushkin CL2.5 would have worked but installing Kingston CL3 is showing to be stable with 2 512mb sticks pc3200 and i only went from a 5167 to 5163 benchmark in 3dmark03.

 

[wazzledoozle]

Well it turns out ebay buy wasn't my problem. The seller swore up and down this was a good motherboard. Turns out the memory was the problem. I've come to a conclusion that nforce2 ultra 400 is picky about memory. See others with asus board using same chipset (A7N8X or something like that) having same problem. Wished the mushkin CL2.5 would have worked but installing Kingston CL3 is showing to be stable with 2 512mb sticks pc3200 and i only went from a 5167 to 5163 benchmark in 3dmark03.

I have a Nforce 2 ultra 400 mobo and it isnt picky at all about the memory. Have you tried updating to the latest bios revision?

 

[enginepower]

I have a Nforce 2 ultra 400 mobo and it isnt picky at all about the memory. Have you tried updating to the latest bios revision?

Yes I have the latest bios, was released 3 days ago. The kingmax made 14 memtest86 passes with no probs in slot B2 so i would think mem is good. Tried it in slot A and pc froze in 12 seconds after memtest started one time. I had purchased same mobo before sending this one off to RMA (can't bear the fact of not having a pc hehe) but it does same exact thing. I'm on 2nd day now running single channel with no probs which i think i'm going to keep it that way. Benchmark reviews showing this board scored less in dual channel mode.

What brand/speed/size mem are you using? Others i saw having trouble were using pc3200 or pc2700. One pc2700 user said he underclocked to pc2100 speeds and solved his problem but who would want to do that? Tried underclocking my pc3200 to pc2100 speeds and got a corrupted bios (bios rom checksum error). Not even taking battery out for 3 hours did anything for it. Had to reflash.

 

[Halki]

heard that nForce chipsets are having probs with asynchronous mem frequencies... is this true?

 

[enginepower]

heard that nForce chipsets are having probs with asynchronous mem frequencies... is this true?

Possibly but i was running mine sychronous and having probs. Maybe its just a mem chip compatibility issue or both. Looking in to my vendor's memory compatibility list, there was only 3 brands listed but said other may be compatible, they just haven't made the list yet. And it might not be limited to brands yet the chips they are using. The mem that made mine stable has samsung chips and i've heard of many compliments on samsung chips.

 

[wazzledoozle]

Possibly but i was running mine sychronous and having probs. Maybe its just a mem chip compatibility issue or both. Looking in to my vendor's memory compatibility list, there was only 3 brands listed but said other may be compatible, they just haven't made the list yet. And it might not be limited to brands yet the chips they are using. The mem that made mine stable has samsung chips and i've heard of many compliments on samsung chips.

Im running my cpu and ram asynchronous, fsb at 200 and ram at 166. I dont feel like oc'ing my ram unless I have to, so Im jsut running it at tight timings. Corsair XMS is awesome ram, it can do 200 but no need.

For the guy with the bad mobo, RMA it. Abit took back a KD7A that was broken and more than a year since I bought it, I just mailed it to them and got it back about a week later, they actually fixed it instead of replacing

 

[enginepower]

Im running my cpu and ram asynchronous, fsb at 200 and ram at 166. I dont feel like oc'ing my ram unless I have to, so Im jsut running it at tight timings. Corsair XMS is awesome ram, it can do 200 but no need.

Well they say you get what you pay for Have heard that's some excellent mem lucky you