Ripping my hair out

[RaGe]

Ok so i built this new pc and it took me like 2 hours to get it running and and finally figured out my problem but I do not know how to fix it. This board is an evga nForce680i SE and the ram is 4x1GB G.Skill PC2-6400. If i put a ram stick in slot 0, vista boots fine. If I put it in dual channel and put a ram stick in slot 0 and 2, vista boots fine. If I take them out and put a stick in slot 1 and in slot 3, vista boots fine. If I add a stick to slot 0 and 2 to make a total of 4GB, vista crashes to the bsod and restarts as its loading up windows at boot. I e-mailed evga about it, but maye someone on here can help me out. Maybe its just a bios setting or something, but any help would be so much appriciated.

[MR|337]

Sounds like maybe a bad stick of ram possibly. Another thing could be the memory itself. Did you check the tested memory on evga site for your board? It's possible that maybe only 2gb of your ram will work with that board versus 4 gb of a tested brand..Well I did some digging and it isnt tested/supported. Heres the 800mhz supported memory for your board:

800 MHz(PC2 6400)
Mushkin XP6400
OCZ OCZ2G8002GK
OCZ OCZ2P800R21G
OCZ OCZ2T8002GK
Corsair XMS6405v4.1
Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400
G.Skill F2-6400PHU2-2GBHZ
G.Skill F2-6400PHU2-2GBNR
G.SKILL F2-6400CL4D-2GBPK
G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ
Team Xtreem PC2-6400 800MHz 3-3-3-8
Team Xtreem PC2-6400 800MHz 4-4-4-10
Patriot PDC22G6400ELK
Geil Ultra GX22GB6400UDC
Super Talent T800UX2GC4

Here's the specs for your memory. I would check the bios to see if it is seeing it as such. If not manually set the timings and voltage. Try at 1.8 first, then if 4gb still wont boot, increase the volts to 2.0v

Voltage 1.8V - 2.0V
Timing 5-5-5-15

If that dont work, rma for evga tested memory. I've never not once had problems from Kingston or Corsair. If you dont plan on overclocking, dont buy expensive or high speed memory.

http://www.evga.com/support/mbmem/

[WidowMaker]

There are alot of pages about this. Even when you get it to work, vista will only see 3.5 gigs of ram. Something about the operating system. The problem is your timing settings when trying to run 4 sticks of ram. You have to relax the timing on the ram and up the voltage to get them to work correctly.

example

Lets say your ram has a voltage range of 1.8v-2.4v. By default the ram will be at 1.8v-2v. try raising the voltage to 2.2v-2.4v.

also if your ram has timing of 5-5-5-12 or something like that. try "relaxing" them to 5-6-6-15 or something like that. You can probably find settings that work for your particular ram in a google search or something.

Can also try dropping the front side bus down just to get it to run stable and then tweak the settings to get things running right

Let me know how you make out.

Widow

[RaGe]

Got my new ram last wednesday and put it in. Works like a charm. windows recognizes all of it. I think that 3.5 problem is with 32 bit and i'm running 64bit. anyways, thanks for the help widow and the ram suggestion. Couldn't be more satisfied with it!

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