[3g-g]

Righty,

I'm not a computer building genious, however I have managed to knock a few together in the past, cheapo ones for family and stuff which have just seemed to work on power on! But my own is giving me some grief and I'm hoping one of you cool guys might have the answer, or just confirm what i think is the issue!

My home PC, getting on 3 years old now has needed a bit more RAM (from it's current 512, shameful I know) for a wee while now, it's a got a good few programs on it, and I don't like how everyone elses PCs and MACs seem to run so much quicker!

On the motherboard are 4 DIMM slots for RAM, currently with a 256 in slot 1 and a 256 in slot 3, for some sort of extra speediness or best use of the RAM installed I'm lead to believe, so I bought myself a 1gb RAM module, the correct kind, PC3200 400MHZ DDR SDRAM, the same type as currently installed as 256s. Now, my PC isn't seeing the installed RAM, is this because I need to have RAM spread evenly over my 4 DIMM slots? Does anyone know? Am I going to have to buy another gig so it's all even? I thought it might be a BIOS setting I was missing, however I can't see anything in there for altering memory. If I only install the gig RAM, with none of the 256s the PC doesn't boot...

Answers on a postacard to me, G, at Talk3G towers. :)

[Ben]

Mhm, no I don't think you need to install your RAM in pairs for it to be visible to the system. There are minor speed improvements to be had from installing RAM in matched pairs in some systems, but other than that...

...are you definitely 'ramming' that RAM in there? It can take one hell of a shove to get RAM seated correctly. Have you tried the RAM in both the free slots and, perhaps, in another machine?

[Hands0n]

First thoughts are that the PC3200 is faulty, DOA, it happens. I recently bought a laptop with an additional amount of SODIMM which was DOA and had to get it replaced.

A way of finding out is to try the PC3200 in another machine if you can get access to one.

I don't think its a Motherboard fault.

The pair of 256MB should go in adjacent banks (1,2 or 3,4) with the 1GB module in the next available slot/pair. They should all work okay together, operating at the speed of the slowest DIMM.

[3g-g]

Gents,

Thankyou for your responses. The RAM was going in OK and it doesn't seem to be DOA, however, I have subsequently found that my board doesn't support high density modules! Which is what I bought, D'oh! So, what I thought I'd save on eBay I'm going to have to spend normally on the high street anyway! Grrr... perhaps there should be a consumer rant about PCs over at theprinciple.co.uk?!

[Ben]

How annoying! Oh well, at least you've found out what was wrong. RAM has always confused the hell out of me! Crucial have this... http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/