Chaintech vnf3-250 wont support 2 Dimms

[lman817]

I have a Chaintech VNF3-250 Motherboard. I'm trying to put in two identical 512mb pc3200 Kingston Valueram RAM sticks. If I put in EITHER of the sticks, in ANY of the three DIMMs it works fine. But as soon as I put in the second stick in positions 1-2, and 1-3 as the manual says, the computer will either not boot or crashes shortly afterward. Does anyone have any ideas? Will flashing the BIOS with a newer version help?

 

[Crashman]

The problem is, the RAM isn't good enough to do it. The solution is, increase the voltage or latency values as perscribed by Dr. Wu.

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[lman817]

Alright I'll try that, though what do you mean by the memory isn't good enough? I know its pretty cheap, but it is a good brand. Just so I know what to buy next time.

 

[Crashman]

ValueRam got a bit of a bad reputation when it often wouldn't run in Dual Channel mode with 875 and nForce2 chipsets. The problem is, as you add RAM, timings become more critical, and if you pair the RAM in dual channel mode, they become more critical once again.

I THOUGHT Kingston had handled the problem by improving their RAM slightly. It's possible that you might have gotten some from an old batch, but it's also possible they didn't improve them as I thought they had.

At any rate, the tricks overclockers use to get RAM stable at higher speeds also work to make RAM more stable as the timings become more stressful.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[lman817]

Its an nforce 3 chipset btw... and it still wont work . I'm going to try emailing kingston.

 

[Rugger]

LOL - if there's anyone on these boards that knows it is on nForce 3 chipset, then that would be Crash...take a look at who wrote the FAQ... :lol:

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[endyen]

Its an nforce 3 chipset

That's why the nf3 in the name.
You should also know that the on die memory controler is very sensitive. It hates long runs to the memory, so use the closest dimm slots.
It also doesn't like different distances to the dimms. Since you bought a chaintech board, that may be part of your problem as well. You may have to downclock your ram to DDR333, or even DDR266 speeds. It wont cause that big a hit, so if you have to ...

 

[Crashman]

Yes, I was just saying the problem first became appearant with those other two chipsets, but I may have confused someone.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>