Problem with having 4 GB memory

Night Hawk · 29 Apr 2009

The timings were one things if too high for what the board generally takes. That may tend to be standard or value ram over any good performance dimms. If the brand you bought is on the recommended list the type would be the likely cause there.

Now for going out and rushing into a new board just to run DDR3 you are also looking at a total upgrade which will cost you far more since you may end up needing a new cpu as well as memory and a few other things to consider.

If the new dimm turned out to be defective you would simply see that replaced by itself or a new pair since the prices on DDR2 are low at this time. If you were planning a new build soon then I would say wait until the new one to spend on what you want there.

marcellusmighty · 30 Apr 2009

One of the things I made sure to check out was the timings and voltages when I purchased the parts from Newegg. For the board, it specified "5-5-5-15", and the RAM used is G. Skill "5-5-5-15". Voltages are 1.8-1.9 volts, as the board says. So the memory is perfect in theory (frequency is also 800 Mhz.). So the only thing, however weird it is, is the brand. Of course, that's assuming the BIOS is not the problem (ahem...

). I've seen 4 GB of DDR3 RAM at 1066 Mhz. for around $80. The X58 is about $200, and the Core i7 is around $260. I could sell my board, memory, and Core 2 for probably a good $250-450 on eBay. Maybe it's worth it.

Night Hawk · 30 Apr 2009

The thing that comes to mind here is that you have gotten into some mislabeled if not defective memory if each dimm works by itself. That would make them incompatible to each other while still working with only one or the other in.

marcellusmighty · 01 May 2009

I thought about that too. So I tried both in a 32-bit environment, and they worked up to 3.25 GBs. the error message I got under vista and 7 when trying to boot into 64-bit was "BIOS may not be fully ACPI compliant" which is why I think it's the BIOS, and my suspicions seem to be confirmed by Biostar's negligence to release an '08 or '09 update like the other guys did! So I sit in a no solution zone.

Night Hawk · 01 May 2009

One reason I've been staying with Asus lately is seeing an excellent online support with frequent updates there. While looking over other makes I keep ending back there each time it seems!

When Vista was first seen I was worried about the present model board in since all it saw then was XP drivers until going direct to NVidia for the nForce chipset updates. 7 recently found some new ones for the same model. At least I got out of that one there!

marcellusmighty · 02 May 2009

Well I can say one thing for sure, and that is I will no longer purchase any chipsets from Biostar in the future.

Night Hawk · 02 May 2009

Biostar only makes the boards not the chipsets as a rule. Intel was the one that made the chipset for that model according to your system specs.

The problem with Biostar appears to be a lack of ready support. Anytime you have to go out and pay for some 3rd party in order to get a bios or any other update seems a little bit lame there since every other company seems to have some download pages seen. Your best option is going to Intel directly to see what you can find there since they made the chipset to start with.

marcellusmighty · 03 May 2009

What's weird is that Intel's 965 chipsets (all of the variations) are unable to provide a compatible BIOS. I think Biostar went ahead and made their own little "Micro" variation, because Intel doesn't have any mention of a Micro version of their board. Soon, I'll be getting a Core i7 chipset and CPU, (hopefully, anyway) and I am tempted to just buy it from Intel for this very reason. Direct support is worth the extra pennies anyday.

FreakyFerret · 03 May 2009

Hi Marcellusmighty,

(I'll bet) The problem is the speed of your RAM. I bought 2 sticks of 800 Mhz RAM for my pc. Stuck them both in as dual-channel and got a BSOD shortly after boot. Through testing, I discovered that if I install not as dual-channel but single, they work fine btw. I then downgraded a speed and system works perfectly now.

Problem was my board couldn't handle the 800 Mhz speed.

Both sets were 2 sticks of 2 gigs each.

What model is your board exactly?

chev65 · 03 May 2009

So you don't even have access to your voltage settings in bios?