Ram issue or Motherboard Issue

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PhantomWare1

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OK, I just built a new system because of a HDD fry (or probably a subconscious desire for a better CPU). I took the ram from my old motherboard (3 x 512 MB PC3200 DDR 400) and put into my new motherboard. Nothing. I could not get to install an operating system or nothing. SO, what i did was perform a minimal hardware install and loaded the OS and got things going. Then i added the second stick of Ram. So far, so good. Put the rest of my hardware in and fine. Now, when i put the third stick of ram in....nothing. THe darn thing kept restarting. Now, i did ram testing with the three sticks only running 2 stick of 512 mb during each test. I did all possible combinations and no errors were shown using the program MEMTEST. The computer works fine with 1024 mb occupying the 2 DIMM slots. But, when i put the third one in it. That is when the fire dies. OK, so now what i did was swap ram with my friend to see if it was that. Same instance. Whenever the 3rd DIMM is occupied, nothing works correctly. Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be the problem, besides the obvious.

Intel P4 3.2 HT 800 FSB Northwood
80 GB WD SATA Drive 8 MB/s
Soyo SY-P4VTP
CoolerMaster Case
Radeon 9200 (I Know, I know)
BenQ DVD+R at 4x
 
That mobo is supposed to support up to 3GB of RAM, but mabye its picky about how much RAM is in the stick in the third slot. 1GB is plenty nowadays. That motherboard is probably meant to have a gig stick in each slot. Keep in mind that performance decreases if you use the third slot. You may have more RAM space which you don't need, but the RAM will run at a slower speed. With my mobo, if you install into the third slot, it will bring all of my RAM down to a PC2700 speed instead of a PC3200.
 
are you using windows 98se phantomware1?

windows 98 doesnt see any more ram than 512mB ddr

your next stopis windows millennium edition!!!

Richard
 
Hello all. I am Using XP Pro, 400 watts of Power. Honestly, I did not know that about the 3rd stick of ram slowing down performance. That was the case in my last PC. I added the stick and there was no overall increase in performance. Oh, I need some tips on using the BIOS for adjusting RAM settings. Can you give me some tip?
 
I may be wrong but you could always check if dual channel is enabled. If it is that might be the problem.
 
I've read that some motherboards, mine is one of them, that you can only use a memory module that is single sided, if the other slots are full.
It also matters what speed they run at,
 
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