Problems with new pc build

[TheGreenGoblin]

I'm building a pc for a friend's uncle who isn't going to do any gaming but who still wanted something fast and was willing to pay 1000$ Canadian for the pc alone with no monitor or peripherals so I got him the following:

Asus A8N-E Nforce 4 motherboard
Athlon 64 3200+ S939
Corsair Value Select 1 Gig Dual channel kit
Seagate 160GB 8mb SATA drive
Sapphire Radeon X300 PCI-E with DVI and Svid out
Antec Sonata Case with 380W True Power PS
Pioneer 109 DVDRW

I got a "page fault in non-paged area blue screen during installation of winxp w/sp2 int. with both dimms installed so I removed one and the install went fine. The PC tested fine of Prime 95 for 13 hours. The other dimm tested fine alone as well for 1.5 hours but with both dimms in the PC, Prime fails after a minute. This happens on both sets of dimm slots.

I had all my cpu and dimm settings at default and am not overclocking this system at all. I increased the dimm voltage from auto to 2.7 in the bios and manually setting command rate for mem to 2T but prime still failed after a minute with both dimms installed. Memtest+ also failed very quickly with both sticks installed . i'm testing them individually to see if Memtest shows one as being defective when Prime didn't.

Cpu-z tells me I have bios version 1001 dated 01/21/2005, there's a beta bios available on Asus' website which I'll wait a little while before installing.

I've got a set of Corsair Value Select Dimms that are working fine in my pc so I'll try those in the Asus and see what happens. Any suggestions in the meantime are welcome.

 

[imported_llama]

what speed are the DIMM's? and are they at Auto speed (100% of FSB/in sync with FSB)

 

[TheGreenGoblin]

From what I remember in cpu-z the dimms were at 200mhz DDR. They are pc 3200. Ive got 1 dimm on memtest now which is telling me it's running at 201mhz so that's fine. All settings are on Auto in the bios now like they were when i had 2 dimms in there.

They also seem to run at 2.5-3-3-8 with one or both dimms installed in "auto" according to memtest. I'll take a look at the bios later when Memtest is done to see if there's anything I missed.

Update: Memtest and the bios show my ram at 200(400 DDR) with 1 and both installed.

 

[montag451]

Also what voltage are the DIMMs running at?
Should be 2.65v to 2.75v

 

[TheGreenGoblin]

The ram voltage is set to default. I installed Asus Probe and it doesn't seem to display Mem voltage, neither does motherboard monitor or cpu-z. Anyone know a decent utilty to see what voltage the board is setting it to?

I did manually set the mem voltage to 2.7 and command rate to 2T and it still would fail prime after a minute. I'm not doing any overclocking so theoretically I shouldn't have to do any serious tweaking to get this to work at stock speeds.

 

[jameswhite1979]

I know it sounds basic but are you able to quickly try these DImms in another PC?

 

[TheGreenGoblin]

Ive got a set of 2 512MB Corsair Value Select Dimms in my pc now , Im going to swap them and test out both sets to see if my dimms test bad in the other pc and how the other's test in mine. Should give me an idea if it's a dimm issue or motherboard issue.

I'm also using a 20pin atx on the Asus A8n-E , from what I"ve read the 24 pin isnt necessary , can anyone confirm this? I've only got 1 video card and 1 hard drive and 1 DVDRW in the system and I'm using a 380W True Power so I wouldn't think power is the issue.

I'll swap those dimms and let you all know what happens.

 

[TheGreenGoblin]

System is flaky with both of my dimms installed too. I think I'm gonna request an RMA for the board and ram too. Maybe this board would prefer some Kingston dimms installed.

 

[ShadowBlade]

NOT 2T!!!

 

[esit]

Did you figure out if the corsair value select dimms were compatible?

Bios 1003 is supposed to increase compatibility with memory modules. Don't know with what.

If you check the memory compatibiltiy table in the asus manual, it says:

512MB CORSAIR VS512MB400 2.5 VALUE seLecT DS VS32M8-5

is qualified for one module operation, or 4 module operation, but not with a pair of modules in dual channel mode. I don't know if this reflects the new bios update though.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Run Memtest

 

[IntegraGSR]

Originally posted by: TheGreenGoblin

Anyone know a decent utilty to see what voltage the board is setting it to?

everest