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First off, here's my hardware.
Motherboard : GA-EP45-DS3L
CPU: Intel Core 2 E8500
Video: EVGA GeForce GTX260
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
I originally built this machine a few years ago, and last week I ordered another 2x1GB set of RAM for it. The model numbers are the same, but the heatsinks look a little different. I'm not sure whether or not this matters, and whether there may be some issue between the new set and the old set. Now here's my problem. The old set works fine. The new set works fine. Each individual stick is fine. But when I put them together, I get some very strange issues. If the old pair are in the first set of slots and the new pair in the second set Windows says I have 4GB installed but only 1 available. The BIOS and memtest list 1537MB as being available, which makes no sense, and memtest fails every time. If I put the new pair in the first slots and the old pair in the second slots, the machine won't even POST.
The board is supposed to support up to 16GB, so I don't believe I'm hitting any board limit. I have updated the BIOS, first to the latest stable version, then to the newest beta as well. I've set the timing manually to 5-5-5-15 according to the sticker on the RAM. The voltage is listed as 2.0-2.1, so I set it to 2.0 since I wasn't sure. I thought about testing it on another board, unfortunately I don't have any others with 4 slots of DDR2.
I've had good luck with GSkill RAM in the past, but I'm at a bit of a loss here. I don't know if it's a problem with the new RAM, the mixing of old and new RAM, some strange issue with the board, or something else. Any ideas?
Motherboard : GA-EP45-DS3L
CPU: Intel Core 2 E8500
Video: EVGA GeForce GTX260
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
I originally built this machine a few years ago, and last week I ordered another 2x1GB set of RAM for it. The model numbers are the same, but the heatsinks look a little different. I'm not sure whether or not this matters, and whether there may be some issue between the new set and the old set. Now here's my problem. The old set works fine. The new set works fine. Each individual stick is fine. But when I put them together, I get some very strange issues. If the old pair are in the first set of slots and the new pair in the second set Windows says I have 4GB installed but only 1 available. The BIOS and memtest list 1537MB as being available, which makes no sense, and memtest fails every time. If I put the new pair in the first slots and the old pair in the second slots, the machine won't even POST.
The board is supposed to support up to 16GB, so I don't believe I'm hitting any board limit. I have updated the BIOS, first to the latest stable version, then to the newest beta as well. I've set the timing manually to 5-5-5-15 according to the sticker on the RAM. The voltage is listed as 2.0-2.1, so I set it to 2.0 since I wasn't sure. I thought about testing it on another board, unfortunately I don't have any others with 4 slots of DDR2.
I've had good luck with GSkill RAM in the past, but I'm at a bit of a loss here. I don't know if it's a problem with the new RAM, the mixing of old and new RAM, some strange issue with the board, or something else. Any ideas?
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