What would putting DDR2 into a DDR slot do?

A person much stupider than I told my friend to add a 1Gb stick of PC3200 DDR2 into his Dell Dimension 4500. (It obviously fit.) He already had a 512Mb stick of DDR that came with the computer.

He tried to boot it, and it didn't POST; the beep code indicated that he should reseat his memory. So, he tried reseating it, but that didn't do anything, so he removed the new RAM and tried it with just the old RAM, but he got the same beep code.

Next, he chatted with a Dell representative online. He told the representative what had happened, but the representative just recommended that he take apart everything and put it back together. He didn't try that, but I doubt that would have fixed anything. I lent him a computer after this happened, and he didn't touch the old computer.

The idiot put the DDR2 into his computer, and the computer worked fine. This isn't surprising as his computer supports DDR2.
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Just today, my friend took the hard drive from the broken computer and put it in that one I had lent him, which was coincidentially also a Dimension 4500 that I had found on the street. When he turned the computer on, he heard what sounded sort of like a fan hitting a cable andthe hard drive started smoking. He couldn't see anything burning, but he smelled the hard drive afterwards.

He removed the stinky hard drive from his computer, which had been the slave on the IDE cable, and BIOS didn't detect the normal-smelling hard drive after this. This is when he told me about it.

To determine what had broken, I switched the optical drives's and hard drive's IDE cables' headers. The hard drive still weren't detected work, and the optical drives still were. Therefore, it was not the headers on the motherboard that were the problem. We took a working IDE cable from another computer and switched that with the one attached to the hard drive, but the hard drive was still not detected. The computer was still making that fan-hitting-wire noise.

Considering it was making that noise, I'm thinking it was probably the hard drive that broke somehow. For some reason I didn't think of this when I was at his house.

So, here's what I'm wondering:
1. Are these two events related?
2. Is there a way I can fix any of them?
3. What normally happens when someone puts DDR2 into a DDR slot?

EDIT: I changed "3. What normally happens when someone puts 184-pin DDR2 into a DDR slot?" to "3. What normally happens when someone puts DDR2 into a DDR slot?" so people wouldn't have to read the whole thread to figure out that I figured out that 184-pin DDR2 doesn't exist.

I thought DDR2 was 240-pin and DDR was 184-pin? How did it fit? (I've never used DDR2 here, so I may have no clue what I'm talking about.)

mage_x said:

I thought DDR2 was 240-pin and DDR was 184-pin? How did it fit? (I've never used DDR2 here, so I may have no clue what I'm talking about.)

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Most DDR2 is 240-pin, but 184-pin DDR2 exists.

CPU Magazine had an article where they put DDR2 into a DDR slot. I believe it was fatal to the Mobo everytime, ussually with fireworks. It has been quite awhile since I read that one though. I'll see if I can find that issue.

Reminds me of the time I put some ram in backwards. (don't ask!) smoked a set of 512's and the motherboard.

When a motherboard goes, I'd say it's likely to take parts with it. (same goes for the PSU) Not always, but can certainly happen.

The notch in the in the DDR and DDR2 modules is in almost the same spot. The only way it would have fit is if he REALLY pushed hard to get it in.

184 Pin DDR2? If it exists, it's not made anymore. This person would not have come across it at the local best buy or the egg.

Most DDR2 is 240-pin, but 184-pin DDR2 exists.

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Doesn't exist never existed. It wouldn't fit the slot even if there was, the pin conenctions are different. There is a notch, that would physically prevent the DDR2 from going in a ddr slot. Nice try though

dicecca112 said:

Doesn't exist never existed. It wouldn't fit the slot even if there was, the pin conenctions are different. There is a notch, that would physically prevent the DDR2 from going in a ddr slot. Nice try though

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Hmm...my brother had been helping this friend with this RAM, so I hadn't really been paying attention to what had been going on. I haven't been keeping up with the new hardware as I haven't been planning on getting a new computer.

The idiot has a Dell XPS, which takes 240-pin DDR2, so the RAM must be DDR2. My brother somehow thought that Newegg sold 184-pin DDR2, (Probably it was listed incorrectly, which is pretty common at Newegg.) and I read that DDR2 wouldn't fit in a DDR slot, so I assumed he was right.

My brother tells me now that our friend said that may have had to push harder than he should have, which would explain how DDR2 could fit in a DDR slot.

So, the RAM must be 240-pin DDR2. This leads me back to my original questions with a slight change to the third:

1. Are these two events related?
2. Is there a way I can fix any of them?
3. What normally happens when someone puts DDR2 into a DDR slot?

i believe the answer to 3 was above. It kills the mobo almost everytime, which makes sence because the 240 pins on the ddr2 sticks would cross the 184pin ddr connecitons in places, sending electricity in places and directions it ain't meant to go.

1 was answered also, for when somthing like this happens then other items on the board can be damaged, includeing Hdds, so when he placed it in the other computer it was still broken. However it is equaly likaly it was damaged when in transit from one computer to the other.

and question 2, the answer is most likely no.

And wouldnt it kill the ram too?

2.8v going through DDR2 will not be healthy.

I haven't really been involved much with this; I'm just posting this stuff because my brother and our friend are too stupid to search Google and post on forums. It turns out that they gave me wrong information before, and I just learned that what I was told before was not quite correct.

The day I lent him the computer, he moved his video card, his RAM and his hard drive from the broken computer to the computer I lent him. He did not use any cables from the broken computer. I happened to have a Dimension 4500, so I lent him the computer and he just moved the hard drive from the broken computer to the computer I lent him. At this point, he had one hard drive in his computer.

Yesterday, he moved a hard drive from a third computer to the computer I lent him. The hard drive had worked before he moved it, but it suddenly broke today as I explained earlier. Maybe something on the hard drive he had moved was damaged such that it would cause problems for the slave on the same channel.

I had also thought earlier that it may be a power supply issue; he had the following things in the computer I had lent him when it broke:

2 Sticks of RAM (maximum)
2 Hard drives
2 Optical Drives
1 GeForce 6200
1 Sound Card
2 Other PCI Cards

Is it still likely that these are two events are related?

i've noticed that some computers (dells gateways and what not) dont always have notches...i am come across memory sockets w/o notches but there werent pins there either

HAHAHA this topic is awesome. I love how you keep referring to that one guy as "the idiot".. .LOL! Man... I'm going to be a LOT MORE careful with my RAM installations from now on!

I too have once put DDR ram in the wrong way round. Miraculously, only the RAM died, though the memory voltage controller stopped working properly on the board, but it was useable.

Now...I would say the board is pretty well dead. I this third hard drive is smoking, then I dont see any way thats coming back to life either, sorry and all.

It doesn't sound likely that a bad HD would damage other components, or screw up an IDE channel. Try using one known-good drive and booting with minimal components and see what happens.

BTW RichardKemp, just love your chapeau.

i attempted this had to file slot but never worked never done any damage either tho lol

ewan1066 said:

i attempted this had to file slot but never worked never done any damage either tho lol

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Holy mutha of resurrected threads batman! For all that is holy, why?

ewan1066 said:

i attempted this had to file slot but never worked never done any damage either tho lol

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You're not serious are you?