Problem Adding More than 3gb of RAM to MOBO, please help ASAP

Hey guys, I'm having an odd problem and it's beginning to **** me off. If you need me to post my system specs for this, I will post them, but I can't at the moment because I'm not at home. The problem I'm having is when I try to add anymore than 3gb of ram to my motherboard, my computer will freeze completely, in standard mode, but not when in safe mode. And it therefore forces me to do a hard restart. The motherboard (MSI K9A Platinum) is brand new and supports up to 8gb, and has 4 channels in all. Everything works great with 3gb (1 gb stick in all three of the four channels), but when I add the fourth gb stick to the fourth channel, the problem occurs. The RAM ( G.SKILL 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) ) is all the same as well. I have heard some things and have an idea that it might be my XP home os, because its 32 bit and not 64, and has some kind of issue with using more than 4gb of ram or something.

Thanks,

Chris

Chris, without your detailed system specs and OS noone will be able to help you in any way, shape or form.

Get back with some more info and we will see what we can do to help

EDIT: A small bit of info to get you started.

1. ANY x86 (32 bit) OS will not support or even recognize more than 2 or perhaps 3 gb of memory. It should NOT make your computer freeze though.

2. Run Memtest on 1 stick of memory at a time. Run it for.....I dunno maybe an hour. Run EACH STICK OF MEMORY IN EACH OF YOUR 4 DIMM SLOTS. This will allow you do see if the problem is a single stick of bad memory, or if there is a problem with the dimm slots on your mobo.

Good luck!

Ok, I attached the info. Right now I have the 3 - 1gb sticks in, so my pc will work, but if I do put in the fourth gb, it shows all four gigs and it also recognizes them in this program called "PC Wizard 2007" that i use to check every little pc spec, but of course freezes at random intervals. However, when I run the 4gbs of ram, in safe-mode, everything works fine, so thats why I doubt the ram is bad, or that one of the DIMM channels is bad. But, you guys know more than me, so idk.

*Bump*

what voltage are you running the ram at.

SSTL 1.8v each, according to PC Wizard.

I know in the BIOS, I have the voltage set to auto tho.

well...when I use this AMD processor applet for my G15 keyboard lcd screen, it says Voltage is 1.40 V.

Do you have the latest bios?

Also, it seems that it is an instability issue. Can you lower the speeds and timings of everything to see if that works?

BIOS are the latest, I just got the mobo like last month and updated it like a few weeks ago to the latest BIOS. I will try that tho, lower timings and speed. But, since XP 32- bit (which im running) only detects and is able to utilize only like 2 gigs anyway, should I just wait and mess around with this stuff when I plan to get vista 64-bit in the future? Since there is no point in really having 4 gigs anyway with 32 bit xp, right?

yeah I know it won't fix itself, but I just really don't wanna mess around with all that at the moment. Any other advice if none of those answers seem to fix anything?

GuItArMaN8373 said:

BIOS are the latest, I just got the mobo like last month and updated it like a few weeks ago to the latest BIOS. I will try that tho, lower timings and speed. But, since XP 32- bit (which im running) only detects and is able to utilize only like 2 gigs anyway, should I just wait and mess around with this stuff when I plan to get vista 64-bit in the future? Since there is no point in really having 4 gigs anyway with 32 bit xp, right?

Click to expand...

Well, you are right, it doesn't really matter.