OT: Computer frustration

[EMatheson]

Just bought today 1 Gb PNY DDR2 PC2-5300 RAM for my computer. I have a motherboard with two DDR2 PC2-4200 slots for RAM with a maximum capacity of 1 Gb of RAM per slot. In those slots, I currently have 1 .5 Gb Hynix DDR2 PC2-4200 RAM and one 1 Gb Kingston DDR2 PC2-6400 RAM. That combination has worked flawlessly for ages. However, replacing the Hynix RAM with the PNY RAM forces the Kingston stick to be ignored by my computer - so I cannot use my brand-new RAM stick... and am stuck at either 1 Gb or 1.5 Gb RAM.
Why can I not use the PNY and Kingston stick together? Who can say? Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhhhh.....

[Lionheart]

I feel your pain..

In older rigs/Mobos, you had tons of issues with sharing sticks of Ram. Not so much these days.. but older rigs, it was horrible.



Bill

[OBIO]

Did you try swapping the 1gig sticks around? Sometimes simply swapping the sticks from one RAM port to the other will get the system to recognize both.

OBIO

[EMatheson]

Did you try swapping the 1gig sticks around? Sometimes simply swapping the sticks from one RAM port to the other will get the system to recognize both.

OBIO
I've tried everything...
one by one, each stick individually in each port individually... the computer will run on any combination of sticks EXCEPT my PNY stick plus my Kingston stick... which really sucks because that is precisely the combination I bought the stick for!

[FengZ]

have you tried skipping slots? I know on some MBs, you must use the slot 1 and slot 3 positions if you have two sticks of ram with the same size.

-feng

[Francois]

Old Chinese proverb: "When PC motherboard older than 6 months, use same RAM in all slots always".

[Alain_F355]

It can be a pain to find out what RAM works with which MOBO. There are some sites that have guids for it. Like the one on http://www.crucial.com/

[EMatheson]

It isn't a motherboard/RAM compatibility problem - it is a RAM/RAM compatibility problem - which is why it is so annoying. There was nothing on the packaging of my new RAM to indicate that it needed special conditions in which to operate!

[EMatheson]

Well... I went back to Best Buy and bought another stick. I got another DDR2 PNY PC2-5300 1 Gb stick - the packaging was identical to the packaging of the stick I bought on Monday. And I do mean identical...
but the RAM inside was different... it was a DDR2 Hynix PC2-5300 1 Gb stick... different chips arranged on the card differently. I guess that PNY must have shipped a load of refurbished RAM to Best Buy or something... no other reason I can think of for finding so radically different pieces of hardware in the same package.
Anyway, the new stick worked in conjunction with my old RAM. Halleleuijah!
It would not work with my other stick of RAM from PNY. I would think the first stick to be defective if I hadn't tested it alone to know for certain it wasn't! Very Strange.
Best Buy accepted the accursed first stick of RAM in return and didn't even charge me a restocking fee, happily enough.
So, all is well that ends well. Just wish it hadn't been so annoying in the first place.

[NAMBUS]

I totally understand were your coming from.
I had huge compatibility problems with the RAM I had bought for my current computer when it was built.
It just would not work happily with my chosen motherboard.
I ended up having to swap it out and replace it entirely with another brand.