ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Mem Upgrade Question

[Rob423]

What's up there fellas.

Running Asus A7n8x Deluxe and have 2 512 Corsair XMS pc3200 Chips in there with the silver heat spreader.

the board is packed with 3 Slots. i have 1 Slot Left and the board supports 3GB.

i have the 2x 512mb in there now. I buy the same make and type Corsair Xms pc3200... i wanna buy a 1GB chip from newegg.

will adding this cause any issues. or it should be fine?

 

[baracuda73]

Shouldn't be a problem

 

[Pain]

I have that same board and have used that exact same memory, and I can say with certainty that those Asus boards do not like Corsair memory. I have 5 of those boards in different flavors and all of them get memory errors with corsair memory, value or expensive. If I use a different brand, mem tests will run for days without errors. Corsair will fail anywhere from minutes to 8 hours, but never run longer than 8 hours.

Now. To your questions. Put the 2 512 sticks in slots 1 and 2, and the new 1G stick in slot three. Dual channle doesn't do much for these boards, but by doing it like that you'll have 1G on each channel.

 

[gamingdork]

Bump.

I have this same board and my question is specifically about the slots.

I have had this board and my system for probably a good year now .. i've had a gig of dual channel ddr266 in it for the duration and always thought i had it built in the correct slots... a 512mb stick in each of the blue colored slots.

Recently I decided to upgrade that to ddr400 (it's the last thing i can upgrade to extend the life of this system (2800+ amd and a 7800gs in the agp slot) till we get well into the 3rd qtr next year and I do a big core upgrade with a new mobo/cpu.

my question is what slots should i be in ?

as i was deciding to do this i went back to some reviews just to make sure i had built mine right and it seems that maybe i should have had the sticks of ram in one blue slot and the black slot.. meaning slots 1 and 3.. so i came here and combed thru these forums and found this thread.

if anyone else is running 2 gig of dual channel ddr400.. blue slots ? or slots 1 and 3 ??

thanks in advance for any help !!!!

and HI ! 1st post

 

[Pain]

Slots 1 and slot 2, the closest to the CPU are on channel 1. Slot 3 is on channel 2. So, either 1 and 3, or, 2 and 3 will give you dual channel mode. Of course, you can use all 3 slots too.

Keep in mind that if your 2800+ is running at 333 (which it is) then I wouldn't run the memory at 400. There will be little to no improvement and it may actually lower the performance by running it assync.

 

[gamingdork]

actually it's running at 266 currently (with the old ram) ... i'm gonna run it at 400 (well 200) when i run the new ram on it and just keep the multiplier down so it's still around 2100 mhz .. am i wrong in thinking that was the way to go ?

 

[mas0n]

I have the same board and the manual says that the memory will run dual channel with slots one two and three filled. I use slots two and three and have 2GB of memory. I had to manually set up the configuration as the A7N8X bios is horrid at auto detect. In theory three populated banks seems like it wouldnt run dual channel by the nature of it taking two slots to get 400MHz. I also have doubts that you will achieve dual channel 400 with the third stick being 1GB. I guess we will see shortly. It may turn out that you wont recieve dual channel but the added memory will make up for it.

 

[Pain]

The documentation isn't very clear, but this particular board doesn't need to run the memory in pairs.

Slots 1 and 2 are on channel 1, and slot 3 is on channel 2. You can figure it out from there. If you want to run dual channel, then the best way is of course to run 2 sticks in eithers slots 1 and 3, or, 2 and 3. You can run all three slots too and it will still run in dual channel mode, but if I were going to do it I would still run the same amount of memory on each channel...i.e. 2 512M sticks on channel 1, and a 1G stick on channel 2.

Dual channel on this chipset isn't all what it is cracked up to be, so there really is little to no difference any way you go, single or dual channel. On paper and in benchmarks you'll see some improvement, but in practice no so much.

IRT Gamingdork: Yes, if you can run at 400 and lower the multiplier on the cpu, that is the best way to go. If your board is not the nf2-400 official fsb 400 board, then it may not run too well at that speed, regardless of what they say. There is a bios update that says it supports 400, but on my older board it never ran all that well at 400, until I got the updated boards with official support for 400.

 

[gamingdork]

ah cool.. yup it's officially 400.. i've been seeing that teasing splash screen for far too long now i will be officially 400 ! haha thanks for the info.. i'll drop them sticks in 2-3 (the blue slots) like i have now then

 

[Pain]

It should tell you on boot if it's running in dual channel. It will flash by, but there will be a text message that the memory is running at XYZ speed, dual channel if it is actually running in dual channel.

You might need a bios update for that message to appear, if I recall correctly.

 

[mas0n]

the 1.013 shows it correctly.

 

[dvdpiddy]

I have that same board and have used that exact same memory, and I can say with certainty that those Asus boards do not like Corsair memory. I have 5 of those boards in different flavors and all of them get memory errors with corsair memory, value or expensive. If I use a different brand, mem tests will run for days without errors. Corsair will fail anywhere from minutes to 8 hours, but never run longer than 8 hours.

Now. To your questions. Put the 2 512 sticks in slots 1 and 2, and the new 1G stick in slot three. Dual channle doesn't do much for these boards, but by doing it like that you'll have 1G on each channel.

Pain you and me think alike i have the same mobo with the same ram and probably the same proc man oh and to the op(original poster) nope it should'nt be a prob.