HELP: Desperately Seeking Assistance on my ASUS P5W DH with 4GB memory.

Khalsa · 10 Sep 2006 at 02:18

Desperately Seeking Assistance on my ASUS P5W DH with 4GB memory.

I’ve just built (or am in the process as some parts are still on order) my 1st Custom PC for 3 years. I am technical enough having worked in IT for 15 yrs to know the general pitfalls of making my own machine. This is the 1st machine I have built in regards to wanting to do some serious overclocking with it. Everything at the moment is running at Stock.

I have 4 GB ((2 x G.Skill 2GB DDR2 HZ PC2-6400 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (F2-6400PHU2-2GBHZ)) trying to be installed into ASUS P5W DH Deluxe i975X, S775, PCI. It will boot up with 2GB fine and even 3 GB but as soon as the 4th stick is installed it fails to POST.

I can arrange the sticks in different slots in the board. Memtest runs fine and tells me the actual individual sticks are fine. With 2GB in (I have tried all 4 sticks in various quantities) I can run Prime95 and the Orthos Prime Beta for multiple hours without any problem. I have left the mem timings at SPD and have also tried them at 4-4-4-12 and 5-5-5-15 at both 2.0 and 2.1 v which is the proper volts listed on the box. I have also loosened the timings completely but no go at all.

Is there a compatibility issue between these sticks and the motherboard when running 4GB?? They are all running default there is no over clocking going on in the board? The memory a week old and whatever 2 sticks of ram I use the machine boots up fine it just won’t with all 4 sticks in it. The fans turn on but the machine does not post any bios information or video signal as if it won’t go past the point of power being provided and nothing else.

I also know XP can not use more than 3GB of ram but I am also testing the VISTA Beta's which will also be running 64Bit OS so will be able to address the full 4 GB of ram

Full Spec of the Machine or will be.

Conroe E6600 2.4 (Installed)
Tuniq Tower120 (Installed with AS5)
ASUS P5W DH (installed running 1305)
4G of DDR2 HZ PC2-6400 (2x1GB) (installed – Will only Post with 2 GB or 3 GB)
X1950 HIS (On-Preorder) Running a Matrox MGA PCI graphics card as a temp.
2 x WD150 Raptors in Raid 0 (Installed with Zalman HD coolers)
Samsung DVD drive (Installed)
Antec P180B (Installed – 3 x Sharkoon SilentX 120mm 1000 fans arriving Monday)
Seasonic M12-600 (arrives Monday using a loaned Seasonic S12 at the mo)
24 inch Samsung 244T (installed)

Any help would be appreciated I have a tech support call open with Gskill at the moment but am having trouble even getting to the PoS Asus website)

Regards

Khalsa

AWPC · 10 Sep 2006 at 10:15

Your problem is a fairly basic one.

Installing XP x86 with more than 3GB Ram.

It needs @ least 512MB for system reserved memory space. Trawl technet but do not think there is anyway around it. Only thing you can do is install XP with 2-3GB ram then after it is up & running put the other ram stick in but you will obviously only get 3.5GB as 512MB will always be unuseable.

FreeStream · 10 Sep 2006 at 13:19

AWPC said:
Your problem is a fairly basic one.

Installing XP x86 with more than 3GB Ram.

It needs @ least 512MB for system reserved memory space. Trawl technet but do not think there is anyway around it. Only thing you can do is install XP with 2-3GB ram then after it is up & running put the other ram stick in but you will obviously only get 3.5GB as 512MB will always be unuseable.

Errrrrm, you have gone in completely the wrong direction. It doesn't post so we haven't got to the windows bit.

As for the problem. Boot with 2Gb, flash to the latest BIOS using WinFlash, restart if it worked (if It didn't do NOT turn it off - make sure it asks you to restart). Set defaults in BIOS. Save, shut down. Clear CMOS for 1 hour. Put all sticks in, there we go.

CR.

stoofa · 10 Sep 2006 at 13:29

I know so few people that actually run with 4GB of RAM on what would be classed as a "desktop" it's difficult to find information on compatability out there.

I'm running 4GB of RAM on a Gigabyte DS4 (Geil DDR800 4-4-4-12) and I didn't have to do anything.
All four modules went in and 4GB was counted.
WinXP Professional installed and that OS tells me I've got 3.25GB of RAM to play with (only went for 4GB because of the great price on the Geil and I knew Vista would make use of it next year).

Is the BIOS correctly setting voltage on your memory?

Khalsa · 10 Sep 2006 at 14:45

Guys,

As i said earlier it does not post so its not an OS problem.

Conc I am at present running 1305 as a Bio and it won't post with that. The only other bios out there is 1401 I think and thats in beta.

I'll try what you say but am unsure about why it would not even POST and what clearing the CMOS will do for an hour??

Yes I am running the memory at the correct volts and have run it at the proper timings as well as opening them up to be really loose.

I am just wandering on this particular board if anyone at all has put in 4 GB of memory without any issues.

Regards

Khasla

kmitty · 10 Sep 2006 at 16:41

I recently built a machine using this Mobo with 4GB RAM. I used 2 sets of Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB). The Mobo shipped with BIOS 701 and posted first time. Initially I installed 64 bit Vista to see what it looked like - it recognised the full 4GB no problem. Reinstalled with 32bit XP for the applications I needed - XP just 'sees' 3GB but seems to work fine

MR.B · 10 Sep 2006 at 20:06

I have the same Board and RAM, also have 4GB of it, and i have no boot problems at all... thats very odd. The only thing i can think of right now is updating the BIOS for the board. I'm using the 1101 BIOS, try that and see if it solves it...

mcdermotx · 12 Sep 2006 at 01:57

Same board here mate with diff memory.......using 4x1gb sticks of the Geil PC-6400..
I was astonished to see it boot up first time with no issues at the default SPD at 1.8v, no issue so far running them at 4-4-4-12 at 2.1v either..
Board came with the 0701 bios, but I flashed it with all sticks in with no problems to 1305......bit of a miracle compared to my DFI SLI-DR AMD setup :eek:

Only thing I made sure of is to use the 2 packs that came separate to each other.....i.e. dual channel, like the other pack's set didn't exist..

Datamonkey · 12 Sep 2006 at 08:36

suggest to me 1 faulty stick fella,

i have exactly the same config well mobo and ram, but with a 6400 clocked at 3.35ghz,

All booted up first time with no issues what so ever. There should be no issues with running the 6400hz kits with xp.

Do note 32bit xp will only address 3gb of ram. 64bit xp will see the full 4gb, 32bit vista like xp will only address 3gb also.

The timings you have tried should have resolved any boot issues, i run 4-4-4-12 at 2.25v though, but thats because i have the ram 1:1 with the cpu at 420mhz on the fsb.

Note my board will not post if the ram is set to anything other than 1:1, alos you need to turn of hyper path3 or something along those lines at work at the moment deffo has the number 3 in its title lol.

Suggest you test each stick on its own and see what happens.

Also what batch is the mem mine is 0606 which is supposed to be the best, could be later batches have some issues??

Just to re-iterate, there are no issues with gskil-6400hz and the p5wdh

Hope thats of some help at least.

Khalsa · 12 Sep 2006 at 14:21

Thanks for the advice guys.

Looks like the MB had a problem with the ram slots as I borrowed 4 GB of Crucial ram and it displayed the same symptoms so its on the way back.

I tested each of the HZ sticks and they all seemed to be good.

I have an ASUS P5W64 WS on the way instead.

Regards

Khalsa