OLd mobo with ram

[Ender78]

Hello,
I am trying to get a old mobo, GA-7N400 to work with 3gigs of 3200, 400 mhz ram what settings do I need in bios to get it to work?

 

[flyinfinni]

You shouldn't really need to do anything in BIOS to make it work. should be able to put it in and boot up. You may want to verify which slots you should install which dims in (might need to put the 1gb sticks in certain slots and the 512mb sticks in the others). Check that and let us know if it works.

 

[Ender78]

Thats what I did and i've been rebooting a lot and when I finally got it to work.. I was playing WoW it had a fatal error saying that it could not access some memory area.

 

[flyinfinni]

Ahh- I would suggest you run memtest if you can, and see what it comes up with. You might want to try loosening your timings in the BIOS. See if that helps.

 

[Ender78]

okay how do I loosen the timings in bios? what area? I am pretty sure thats the problem since the RAM is brand new


Just in case this info is needed trying to get 4 Corsair Sticks to work. 2-1GB 3200 dimm and 2-512MB 3200 Dimm

 

[flyinfinni]

RAM can come with problems- so its worth checking with memtest to make sure they are all good sticks.
Timings are in the BIOS in the same area as you'd do overclocking. It should be near where you see your CPU clock speed and multiplier, you'll have RAM multiplier and speed and there should be somewhere near there referring to advanced settings or timings or something of that sort.

 

[Ender78]

I have mmtest but am not sure how to run it.. I made a memtest startup disk but it doesnt work like it did the first time I tried to use it. I set the FSB to 166 and the other one to auto... thats how I got windows to work right but when I try to play W0W, the system reboots

 

[flyinfinni]

make sure your BIOS is set to boot first from the CD driver or floppy (whichever you have your memtest startup disk on) and it should boot that and then you should be able to run a couple of times through and make sure all the RAM is good. Might also help to increase the RAM voltage a little.

 

[Ender78]

tried the change the voltage a bit but it was more unstable until I put it back on normal voltage. running Memtest now for second time.. computer rebooted during first time dunno if it was BSOD or not screen changed too quickly

 

[flyinfinni]

Ok. so Voltage is a no go If you can't get memtest to run, you might want to try making a new disk, or you may have bad RAM (which would explain everything quite sufficiently)

 

[Ender78]

okay how do I find out which ram is the bad one? the second memtest attempt is still going on.

 

[Thadius856]

okay how do I find out which ram is the bad one? the second memtest attempt is still going on.

Pull all sticks but one, and run memtest86+ on each individually from a bootable floppy, CD, DVD, or USB drive.

If you get issues from all of the sticks individually, it's more likely the board going bad.

 

[flyinfinni]

Yeah- to find out which is bad, run them one at a time, and like Thadius said- if they are ALL bad, then its more likely the board is bad. Hope it runs right for ya this time.

 

[Ender78]

weird thing is that both the bios and windows task manager say all 3gbs of ram checked out okay

 

[flyinfinni]

did the memtest run properly? It can look like its working and detected fine in windows and still have errors and crash when you hit the right sector.

 

[Thadius856]

weird thing is that both the bios and windows task manager say all 3gbs of ram checked out okay

You can't rely on these measures. They mere tell you what amount of RAM is present, not that its functioning correctly. And not all RAM problems are static - many are somewhat sporadic. A single bit refusing to re-write 10% of the time can wreck some pretty decent havoc.

Run the tests and then we'll know where to go from there.

 

[Ender78]

okay looking for a easier to read/use ram testing program

 

[Thadius856]

Memtest86+ is very easy to use... errors are always coded in red and they'll be very obvious.

Download the bootable ISO and burn it to a CD using an ISO burner. That's all there is to it.

 

[flyinfinni]

memtest86 is the best one.

 

[Ender78]

okay running memtest86+ again

 

[Ender78]

damn it found a lot of errors on the fifth test... gonna put the old ram back in and wait til i can afford a new upgrade

 

[flyinfinni]

Did you try running one stick at a time to find the bad stick? it could be the mobo, or you may be able to RMA the bad RAM.

 

[Thadius856]

Glad to see that you found the root cause of the issue, more or less.

I'd still attempt to try each stick individually. You can probably skimp by on one less stick that usual until you can order a replacement or upgraded set of RAM.