New memory causes PC slowness / bluescreen

[BrokenWing]

I bought 2 new PNY PC6400 / 2GB / 800MHz / DDR2 / 240pin DIMMs from Play.com and tried to install them at the weekend.

My Asus P5N32 SLI SE Deluxe mobo had 4 slots of 512MB Corsair 800Mhz XMS2 Dominator memory installed so clever me figured "If I turn on the memory remap feature of the mobo I can have 5 GB of memory, by removing 2 of the 512MB DIMMs and replacing them with the two 2GB DIMMs".

I put the 2 new PNY 2GB chips into slots 0 & 1, and left 2 of the Corsair 512MB chips in 2 & 3.

The PC blue-screened on the Vista (64bit Ultimate) load screen. Did this again when I swapped the new PNY chips around.

I took out the Corsair chips completely, leaving only the 4GB of PNY and turned off the re-map feature. The PC loaded without crashing but it ran at what felt like 10% of it's processing power. Windows took AGES to load, it took minutes to load Control Panel to view the system memory available (4GB) then trying to load Left 4 Dead stuttered through the opening video at like 1 fps.

So I decided to go back to only the 4 Corsair memory chips but now that bluescreens at the load screen. Totally frustrated I turned the thing off.

From my limited knowledge I would have thought that having DDR2 800Mhz chips from different manufacturers should be fine, as long as they are in pairs, but maybe I'm wrong? I also worry that I've trashed the Corsair memory myself from continually loading and unloading it.

Questions:

1. Is it OK to mix memory chips like I have?

2. Is the PNY memory faulty?

3. Could the (faulty) PNY memory have trashed the Corsair memory when I tried to load with 5GB?

4. Is there anything that can be set in the BIOS to "fix" the PNY memory, e.g. voltage settings. I mean would the chips have timing settings or something I could set that might differ from the Corsair ones and cause them not to work right?

[shaithis]

Try the new ram in slots 0 & 2 and if you get no joy, then try in 1 & 3.

Normally with the dual channel boards, you do not insert pairs next to each other, they need to be installed interleaved.

Sometimes you cannot mix brands, although nothing should be permanently damaged.....are you sure you haven't knocked anything loss while swapping the RAM?

[BrokenWing]

That might explain why slots 0 & 2 are yellow and slots 1 & 3 are black.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll let you know if that works.

I don't think I've knocked anything else, though the clips for the memory chips are VERY close to my massive 9800GTX+ graphics card. In fact they may even touch it when opened. Hope I haven't damaged THAT!

[Infinite]

yeh, u probably got it in the wrong channel

and check voltages, your old ones probably needed less juice,

[Thorsson]

PNY is not perhaps the name you first think of when considering memory manufacturers, and given how cheaply they're selling it... Tell you what, knock it back a speed notch and I bet it works.

[BrokenWing]

Any idea where I can find the proper voltage and latency settings for this PNY memory?

Their website is less than useless.

The manufacturer code from the chip is 64B0QJTHE. As best I can tell this is listed as MD2048SD2-800 on the PNY website, though my memory has no heatsinks.

[BrokenWing]

I've tried each of the PNY chips on their own in slot 0, together in slot 0 & 1 and together in slot 0 & 2. Still can't get past the Windows load screen without BSOD.

I've tried the original Corsair memory using both the original pairs of 512MB in slots 0 & 1. Sometimes I can get to log in (both in normal and safe mode) but shortly afterward I will get BSOD. Sometimes I don't get past the load screen without getting a "kernel" fault screen.

I've set the BIOS back to default settings and still my original Corsair memory won't work. I previously wouldn't have changed anything in the BIOS, apart from the boot order, so it REALLY bothers me that the Corsair stuff crashes.

I mean I put everything back to the (working) state it was prior to loading the PNY stuff but still I get BSOD / kernel fault. AAAH!

That's what makes me think I've damaged something, even if it is just my Windows installation. I really don't want to go down the route of re-installing Vista just to find the same problems though.

[Flash477]

Have you tried to just start the computer with the memory in and a mem check running?

It also just be that windows is not liking the change in hardware and is not dealing with it like it should

[blueball]

"I have installed new memory and the system will not reboot, even with old memory"

http://www3.pny.com/support/support_...SectionID=1040

Hope it helps?

You may also want to set the memory voltage to 2.1V instead of the default 1.8V

[BrokenWing]

A few times when Vista failed to load it gave me the option of running a memory diagnostic tool but apart from telling me I had memory faults it wasn't very helpful.

Are you talking about disabling Quick Boot? Or booting up with a some sort of memory tools?

[Thorsson]

Bootable floppy, CD or even Flash drive with Memtest86 http://www.memtest86.com/ . Takes Windows out of the equation. But, concerning the Corsair: do you have the voltage set to the recommended level?

[BrokenWing]

OK... Adjusted voltages to 2.1, timings to 5-5-5-5-12 and still got BSOD shortly after log in.

Back to Corsair memory and same thing happened regardless of what combination I used.

Event log was going on about RPCServer ncacn_ip_tcp something or other so just gave up and took the drastic step of re-installing Vista, with the PNY memory installed and BIOS back to default settings.

Everything worked, except MAN IS IT SLOOOOW. The Quad Core CPU is constantly running at 100% and memory usage is about 25-27% (approx 1 GB of the PNY 4GB now on board).

I ran CPU-Z and it tells me that the 2 channels of memory are running at 5-5-5-18-23 and 4-5-5-18-23, which seem horrendous figures to me. The voltage is 1.8 and each channel of memory runs at 400MHz (so this makes it 800MHz memory it total?).

I perservered and let it download 76 Windows Updates then went to shut it down and install them. That was 10 hours ago and the PC is currently sitting on the shutdown screen stating "Installing 7 of 76 updates". SLOOOOOOOOW.

I plan to let it run all day while I'm at work but, if it's still running when I'm home, what are the consequences of switching a PC mid-update?

When I finally get back to the BIOS I'm planning to go back to 2.1 voltage and 5-5-5-5-12 timings. I seem to remember the PC booted to Windows much quicker with those settings, prior to the BSOD earlier.

[blueball]

The fact trhat the channels are running at different speeds may be the problem

[Flash477]

Just a couple of things.

Firstly it should not be runnning that slowly, there is obviously something wrong and no each stick should be running at 800 not 400. If you turn off the PC during its updating then the worst that will happen is that you will need to re-install Vista again, but given that it is a clean install atm that should not be too much of an ordeal.

1. Have you tried letting the bios choose the voltage / timings?
2. Which slots are the memory in?
3. Have you tried using Microsofts Memory Diagnostic tool (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp) - it could just be that you have bad memory

[blueball]

Letting the BIOS choose voltage usually means that it goes to 1.8V even though the memory is designed to run at 2.1V (for instance). I haven't yet seen any DDR2 memory that requires more volts to actually communicate the fact to the BIOS. I have tried GSkill, Geil, Corsair and Crucial.

[BrokenWing]

The motherboard comes with 4 slots - A1&A2 and B1&B2. The 2 x 2GB PNY chips are in A1&A2.

Could it be that the memory is throttled back to 400MHz because of a lack of voltage?

At the minute the BIOS is choosing everything. Like I said the plan is to change it to 2.1V when I get home this evening.