Memory pairing.

[Zhriver]

A friend offered me 4gb out of his 8gb ddr2(4x2GB config) memory today.
I received the 2 sticks, however the machine wouldn't boot with them.
So we tried with all 4 of the sticks and voila it booted just fine.
I checked and double checked multiple times that I had them in the right slot when only using 2 sticks.

Are the sticks really paired like that? My mate was pretty sure that he had bought them in packages of 2x2gb.

Thanks

 

[purecain]

its simply your motherboard responding to the eprom built into the pcb of the ram...

go into your bios and change the settings to manual(if it isnt already), and make sure you set the volts needed....
its as simple as that.... its actually quite rare 'for me' not to be able to get finicky ram working with some boards...
90% chance of it working so do what i said and even slacken the timings... if just changing the volts doesnt work... good luck, i'll keep checking this thread to help where i can...
good luck with it...

 

[Zhriver]

The machine is running now, I just kept all of his 4x 2GB sticks.
I haven't had to lower timings or anything: Running them at manually assigned factory specs 5-5-5-15 at 2.1volts
With all 4 of them = instant succes.

With only 2 of them, the machine wont even POST.
I've already run memtest on the lot of them to check if something is amiss, but they all work flawlessly together.

 

[purecain]

unsolved.... 4 sticks ftw then...

 

[Zhriver]

Indeed =)

 

[Goodman]

Tried booting with only one Ram at the time to see if one of them is faulty?

You may also have a faulty slot on the Mobo?

 

[Wumpus]

are you sure windows or the BIOS see all of the memory?

it could be the other two sticks are dead, and when you put in all 4, it is using the working memory only.

 

[Zhriver]

Tried booting with only one Ram at the time to see if one of them is faulty?

You may also have a faulty slot on the Mobo?

Tried it all, it'll only post with all 4 of those sticks. I've got another pair that works just fine, however not in conjunction with any of the 4 I received from my mate.