A8V-VM SE and blank screen with new ram
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From: Thomas Andersson on 1 Jul 2008 08:41 Hi! HOpe someone can help my cousin. He's got a A8V-VM SE with 1GB ram. He decided he wanted more ram so he bought 2 1GB sticks and put in. Now all he gets is a black screen from his gfx card (and no signal from mobo port). There's no beeps or anything and he says it sounds like it's satrting up OK, just no signal. Switching back to old ram and everything is OK again... Any ideas what might be wrong and how to sort it? TIA Thomas
From: Thomas Andersson on 1 Jul 2008 12:25 Paul wrote: >> HOpe someone can help my cousin. He's got a A8V-VM SE with 1GB ram. >> He decided he wanted more ram so he bought 2 1GB sticks and put in. >> Now all he gets is a black screen from his gfx card (and no signal >> from mobo port). There's no beeps or anything and he says it sounds >> like it's satrting up OK, just no signal. Switching back to old ram >> and everything is OK again... Any ideas what might be wrong and how to >> sort it? > Try one stick at a time. Doh, why didn't I think of that? > Examine the construction of the sticks, to see if they are registered > or unbuffered. Registered ones have extra, smaller chips, in the > center of the DIMM. The BIOS should beep if registered sticks are > detected. > Chances are, your cousin bought high density (128Mx4) chipped DIMMs > from Ebay. As far as I know, they'll work on an Athlon64 processor, > but would not be my first choice in memory. And with an Ebay purchase, > getting your > money back, or getting satisfaction, is not going to be easy. I've messaged him to send me all info of the dimms as he lives a bit to far away from me to check for myself. Anyway, they were bought here in Sweden and not from eBay. > I don't see a reason why the motherboard and its BIOS, would > have a problem setting up the resources, when only 2GB of > RAM are present. Yeah, I don'�t get it either, spec since there are no beeps from mobo saying anything is wronga dn things seems to spin up. Got him to switch to mobo gfx.. but that also gives a blank screen with the new ram. The only thing I can think off is his buss won't do over 200 (think there was a 250 setting) and the new ram he bought is 333 I think, but shouldn't that fallback automatically? Best Wishes Thomas
From: Thomas Andersson on 1 Jul 2008 12:50 Paul wrote: >> HOpe someone can help my cousin. He's got a A8V-VM SE with 1GB ram. >> He decided he wanted more ram so he bought 2 1GB sticks and put in. >> Now all he gets is a black screen from his gfx card (and no signal >> from mobo port). There's no beeps or anything and he says it sounds >> like it's satrting up OK, just no signal. Switching back to old ram >> and everything is OK again... Any ideas what might be wrong and how to >> sort it? > Examine the construction of the sticks, to see if they are registered > or unbuffered. Registered ones have extra, smaller chips, in the > center of the DIMM. The BIOS should beep if registered sticks are > detected. Ok, managed to track his mem down. It's Apacer unbuffered CL3 PC3200 ram and makers page says it uses 32/62MX8 chips so that kills that specualtion. Mobo is on the list that doesn't support the 64bit ones as you suggested though so thought was correct. Hmm, Acers site list only ECC dims for the board though (is that registered) ? There's nothing about ECC in his current chips specc. Best Wishes Thomas
From: Paul on 1 Jul 2008 14:16 Thomas Andersson wrote: > Paul wrote: > >>> HOpe someone can help my cousin. He's got a A8V-VM SE with 1GB ram. >>> He decided he wanted more ram so he bought 2 1GB sticks and put in. >>> Now all he gets is a black screen from his gfx card (and no signal >>> from mobo port). There's no beeps or anything and he says it sounds >>> like it's satrting up OK, just no signal. Switching back to old ram >>> and everything is OK again... Any ideas what might be wrong and how to >>> sort it? > >> Examine the construction of the sticks, to see if they are registered >> or unbuffered. Registered ones have extra, smaller chips, in the >> center of the DIMM. The BIOS should beep if registered sticks are >> detected. > > Ok, managed to track his mem down. It's Apacer unbuffered CL3 PC3200 ram and > makers page says it uses 32/62MX8 chips so that kills that specualtion. Mobo > is on the list that doesn't support the 64bit ones as you suggested though > so thought was correct. > Hmm, Acers site list only ECC dims for the board though (is that registered) > ? There's nothing about ECC in his current chips specc. > > Best Wishes > Thomas > A higher speed memory can fall back to operation at a lower speed. For example, a DDR400 stick can run as slow as DDR200 when needed. (It can actually run a bit slower than that, but there is no need for it to run slower than DDR200.) The manual says that ECC or non-ECC can be used, but they cannot be mixed. (That is the usual advice regarding the two different types.) http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A8V-VM%20SE Perhaps you could give an exact part number, or a link to the Apacer product page, so I could read the specs. It could be that the RAM is bad, but if you test it one stick at a time, odds are that one of the sticks is still working. The memory types are - unbuffered and non-ECC (majority of desktop memory is like this) unbuffered and ECC (supported by Athlon64, used on desktops, ECC is used to protect data contents) registered and ECC (server memory, registered to support more slots, ECC is used to protect data contents) There is no "registered and non-ECC" product, because there is no market for it. No server builder would use it. Paul
From: Thomas Andersson on 1 Jul 2008 18:00
Paul wrote: >> Ok, managed to track his mem down. It's Apacer unbuffered CL3 PC3200 >> ram and makers page says it uses 32/62MX8 chips so that kills that >> specualtion. Mobo is on the list that doesn't support the 64bit ones >> as you suggested though so thought was correct. >> Hmm, Acers site list only ECC dims for the board though (is that >> registered) ? There's nothing about ECC in his current chips specc. > > The manual says that ECC or non-ECC can be used, but they cannot > be mixed. (That is the usual advice regarding the two different > types.) > http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A8V-VM%20SE > > Perhaps you could give an exact part number, or a link to the > Apacer product page, so I could read the specs. > > It could be that the RAM is bad, but if you test it one stick at > a time, odds are that one of the sticks is still working. Whatever it is it's very odd. I asked him to give me all info on the sticks he had and he sent. On label: P/N:77.G1136.23G S/N:230816120342 1GB UNB PC3200 CL3 When running apacers ram-finder tool all listed memory is ECC models for some reason. Mixed memory types wasn't a problem as he only ran either at any time. He tried running both modules one at the time and neither case was any improvement. Best Wishes Thomas |