PC issue with RAM/MOBO any ideas?

soprano · 25 Mar 2010 at 14:02

Guys, my friend put a new PSU in his pc and then it wouldnt boot up, he started by taking out 1 of the RAM sticks and it booted ok :eek:

swapped it with another one and that booted ok so he knew it couldnt be the RAM but maybe the RAM slot on the MOBO? but wouldnt the whole board be affected?
Anyway he had 4GB of paired RAM but now he has only 3 slots working so its 3x1gb as opposed to the 4gb paired and subsequently its much much slower.
My/his question is, is there anything he can do without having to replace the MOBO as thats a real pain and would he be better with taking another 1gb RAM out so he has 2gb PAIRED as opposed to 3x1GB?

specs are
2.67 gigahertz Intel Core2 Duo
Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. P5N32-E SLI 1.XX
Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3

3072 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory
Slot 'DIMM_A1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM_A2' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM_B1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM_B2' is Empty

thanks

geoirv23 · 25 Mar 2010 at 14:19

One option would be to sell the current ram and buy 2x2gb kit. (as long as his MB supports it)

soprano · 25 Mar 2010 at 14:26

geoirv23 said:
One option would be to sell the current ram and buy 2x2gb kit. (as long as his MB supports it)

interesting idea, how will he know if it supports 2x2gb?

cmndr_andi · 25 Mar 2010 at 14:26

Has he tested each RAM stick individually in a known working slot to ensure all RAM sticks are OK?

Also, has he tried booting with just 1 (know working) RAM stick in the suspected faulty socket?

If it is a failure of the RAM slot then I would suggest RMAing the motherboard. Does he have any warranty left with it?

If he doesn't want to RMA the board, XP should run OK with 2GB in dual channel mode- I would certainly prefer running it in this configuration instead of 3GB single channel. If he wants to run at full 4GB again I would suggest selling the 4x1GB sticks (should get a decent price for them) and buy a 2x2GB kit like this. That motherboard does support 2GB RAM sticks, so this will work.

soprano · 25 Mar 2010 at 15:01

cmndr_andi said:
Has he tested each RAM stick individually in a known working slot to ensure all RAM sticks are OK?
yes all ok

Also, has he tried booting with just 1 (know working) RAM stick in the suspected faulty socket?
yes wont boot up

If it is a failure of the RAM slot then I would suggest RMAing the motherboard. Does he have any warranty left with it?
unfortunately not

If he doesn't want to RMA the board, XP should run OK with 2GB in dual channel mode- I would certainly prefer running it in this configuration instead of 3GB single channel.
do you think that will be faster than 3x1gb as its easy to remove but hassle to sell them and buy more?

cmndr_andi · 25 Mar 2010 at 15:05

It should be faster, I believe 2GB is the memory sweetspot for XP, so it should run fin with this amount. An theoretically, running in Dual channel mode doubles the memory bandwidth, so it should run faster.

soprano · 25 Mar 2010 at 16:25

cmndr_andi said:
It should be faster, I believe 2GB is the memory sweetspot for XP, so it should run fin with this amount. An theoretically, running in Dual channel mode doubles the memory bandwidth, so it should run faster.

thanks, will try that