I just bought a Intel 8400, a Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 and a 2GB kit of Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC6400 CL4 RAM.

I put the components together (I have been building PC's for over 15 years). When I switched on, the CPU fan span up and the motherboard leds lit. Then after about 5 seconds it switched itself off. Then it switched itself back on and the cycle repeats over and over. There is no display and no POST beeps.

I put some slightly older slower DDR2 RAM into the motherboard and it then starts up. However it then randomly locks up solid
(even the reset button does not work!). It will not run for more than 5 minutes.

I have a one month old Corsair 550W PSU and a Nvidia 9600GT which work fine in my older system.

Anyway, it looks like to board is twitchy with RAM. Anyone got a stable X48-DQ6 system running? If so, what RAM are you using?

It might just be a faulty motherboard. Consider rma it.

I use the EX38-DS4, with 8gb of this 800mhz ddr2, stress tested stable when oced to 1066mhz.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820144216

I've sent it back. The final straw was the replies I got from Gigabyte support.

I told them that it doesn't get as far as the BIOS and then they go and tell me that the Crucial PC6400 CL4 RAM needs more voltage and to up the RAM voltage in the BIOS. Erm...

They also said that this RAM is 533MHz and therefore unsupported when they are 800MHz parts.

So it looks like this motherboard will not work out of the box with Crucial PC6400 CL4 RAM. This is really lame, especially as that RAM is listed as compatible by Gigabyte. I shouldn't have to muck about with voltages.

Back to Asus I think.