Anybody want to help with my nervous breakdown ?!

I'll try and give you this in a logical order !!

Built 2 new PC's one for me one for the son, which were an Intel 6850, 4GB Patriot 800Mhz DDR2, Nvidia 7600GT, Antec case and Antec 650W PSU, Asus P5K MB and all the usual drives. Vista Ultimate 64

Built it, every thing went ok on both, used mine for 2 days but it didn't feel right.
It worked, but just felt wrong. So a bit of searching in the manual revealed that Asus have another bios on the cd specifically for those who intend to install a 64 bit OS. Aha, lets put that on then. BAD MOVE, did it from windows with the live update. This bit of software is badly named. It should be called the dead update. So after much messing about off went the dead MB to the shop. The shop cursed asus, I cursed asus and the shop replaced it. Back home I go, set up the board on the bench to test it. and the boards Dead. No life at all. OH ****** !!. So now I wonder has the previous MB decided to kill my chip. I realize that technically thats not possible but..............

Put the chip in the sons machine and its fine. so next tried all the ram, its fine. So back to the shop who are now eying me suspiciously as a Board Killer.

Once again they test it, curse asus, etc. So a new plan was hatched. Use a Gigabyte 965P DS3.

Took it home, put it on the bench installed chip 1GB ram, Graphics card and it fired up. Perfect

Installed rest of ram still perfect

Put everything in case, connected it all up and booted into windows. Blue screens everywhere. Not unexpected and so reinstalled Vista. Well, I tried to.

Errors all over the place. Extreme cursing ensued, Then I decided to remove 2 GB. Vista installed perfectly. All the drivers went on, a phone call to India to explain how I had the temerity to change the MB and I'm activated and running. Oh hell this board feels good. Fast, responsive, and generally wonderful all round. Smiled for the first time that day

But that still left the 2GB. So, swapped it with the 2GB in the machine. No problems at all. So, back to 4GB. Blue screens all over the place. WTF !!!

Ok, next tried 3GB, back to smiling again.

Erm.....................

I checked on the Patriot website and the Voltage for the ram is 1.8 and thats what the board says as well.

Checked the ram timings it seems to have got them right.

So can anyone tell me why I cant use 4GB?

,

When you say you have 3G and everything is fine, can you put any of the other 1G sticks and get the bluescreens @ 4G? Can you narrow down the problem to a single stick? Have you tried running memtest against each 1G stick? Have you checked the mobo manual to make sure 1G x 4 is supported?

I have read about several ppl having issues with 1G x 4 configs on mobos. This is what prompted me to get 2 x 2G sticks.

I'll take a stick off ya.. J/k.

Your story reminds me of my woeful AMD days. Boy, what a nightmare. I feel your pain bro.

I would definately memtest each stick independantly like Chawks said. If they all check out, take your kids PSU and put it in your rig, and throw all 4 sticks in and see if it's ok. The beauty of having 2 identicle machines is that you have the ability to precisely nail whatever it is that's causing the problem. Change out PSU for PSU, if the same thing happens, change them back and then change out mobo for mobo. Same thing happens change back and then change out the HD's ect ect... eventually you'll find the culprit. If you don't, then I say you should completely take apart the entire rig and do a very close inspection of the case, the standoffs for the motherboard, the area beneath the table (the part that the standoffs screw into)... everything, just to make double sure nothing is shorting out. You can never be too sure.

For instance, my aforementioned woeful AMD days... about a week ago I dragged my old Antec case out that the AMD resided in because I'm using it for the rig I have now. I just spent a heap of money, and don't want to take any chances, so I checked absolutely every single area inside and out to make sure nothing was floating about. Wanna know what I found? A WOOD SCREW. A bleepin' wood screw was wedged underneath the mobo table the ENTIRE time. That thing was giving me problems for.. I don't even want to tell you because it's just so embarassing, but... if all else fails it can't hurt to just check it out.

Using 4 sticks of RAM does put a bit more stress on the system. Try using 2.0v on the RAM (+0.2v with Gigabyte). Seems like RAM likes a little more memory voltage with those boards anyway.

chawks2 said:

When you say you have 3G and everything is fine, can you put any of the other 1G sticks and get the bluescreens @ 4G? Can you narrow down the problem to a single stick? Have you tried running memtest against each 1G stick? Have you checked the mobo manual to make sure 1G x 4 is supported?

I have read about several ppl having issues with 1G x 4 configs on mobos. This is what prompted me to get 2 x 2G sticks.

Click to expand...

The board supports 8GB

I have tried various combinations of 3 of the 4 sticks

and I can be 99% certain none of them are faulty ( if I put all 4 of them in the sons machine they work fine )

xilix said:

I'll take a stick off ya.. J/k.

Change out PSU for PSU, if the same thing happens, change them back and then change out mobo for mobo.

Click to expand...

Ah, thought we had it then ! Sadly no, the PSU is fine.

LOL at the wood screw. I've also very found strange things in my cases, has to be asked how the hell they get there

After all the trouble I checked the case with a fine toothed comb and its fine as well.

batboy said:

Using 4 sticks of RAM does put a bit more stress on the system. Try using 2.0v on the RAM (+0.2v with Gigabyte). Seems like RAM likes a little more memory voltage with those boards anyway.

Click to expand...

Gonna try that, hang on ! ( If I'm not back the ram blew )

Ahhhh !!!!!!!!!!!! Looks very promising, an access violation on boot up, but I think thats related to the swap file and me not allowing windows enough room for a 6gb one.

No crashes yet I'm gonna chuck some memory bench marks at it and see what happens.

Yep, that seems to have cracked it !

Thanks to batboy and all others who replied.

Congrats! Glad to hear you got it cleared up.

Yeah that was a great read! You would think that hardware at stock speeds in stock configurations would just work. Imagine if you had 4x2gig sticks? it would need like 5V.

Congrats!

xilix said:

Congrats! Glad to hear you got it cleared up.

Click to expand...

Thanks

aja said:

Yeah that was a great read! You would think that hardware at stock speeds in stock configurations would just work. Imagine if you had 4x2gig sticks? it would need like 5V.

Congrats!

Click to expand...

I know !! Makes you wonder how many boards get sent back as faulty

The DS3 is kinda weird with voltages... Particularly if you have anything lower than revision 3.0