Bad Memory?

I just purchased 2GB of PQI RAM, and I was wondering if one of the sticks is bad.

I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Board with PQI 1GB x 2 sticks. I tried both in slots A1 & B1 (Dual-Channel), but no boot. Then I tried one in slot B1, it booted fine. Then, I tried the other in the same slot, and no boot. It just turns on with the fans at full speed.

Any ideas on what might work?

You may have a bad stick of ram but not necessarily. I would reinsert it and try again just to make sure it's making contact. I have had boards where the ram seemed to be proper;y inserted, yet in wouldn't ne recognized. Reinstalling them with a lttle extra oressure took care of it.You could try and test it on another board just to be sure. I returned 2 sets of PQI ram before I got one that would run at it's specified timings, so I don't think much of their quality control. Good luck with it.

Yes, what rseven said. Try reseating, power cycling (the switch on the back of the PSU) and blow out the DIMM slots with air incase poor contact is occuring. Sometimes the motherboard can get confused and not boot after moving memory around. That is why it good to cut the power to the MB sometimes before making hardware config changes.

Once you get a stick that boots, run memtest86 at default speeds and check for errors. If you get errors, then the memory is bad and you should RMA.

I cleaned out the slots with air, and made sure that the RAM was in good, and still nothing. I tried my G Skill RAM in there and it is the same thing.

The weird thing is now, my DFI board won't boot with the G Skill RAM now.

I have heard someone say that taking the board out of the case and sitting it on some cardboard fixed his RAM problem.

BTW, the only slot on the MoBo that the RAM will boot in is B1. Maybe they aren't supposed to boot in the other ones, but I am not sure.

Any other ideas?

The motherboard on cardboard thing is to isolate a potential short circuit with the case.

At this point, I recommend doing that since you can't get a consitent pattern success and failures yet. Also- be sure to unplug any HDDs to save them the stress of all these power cycles you're doing.

So- get the MB out of the case and put it on something non conductive, like the static bag it came in on a piece of cardboard, and just have the CPU+HS/F, memory, video card and PSU plugged in. You can short the power switch jumper with a screwdriver or a jumper if need be. Systematically try each slot with each peice of ram to narrow down which part is bad.

Lastly, a good CMOS reset seems to be in order. Pop out the CMOS battery witht he machine powered off and unplugged. Wait 5-10 mins, then put the batter back in, and try to boot. You *may* want to do this while the MB is in the case first to see if you get lucky. Good luck!