RAM Upgrade Hell
posted in Technology, Hardware |I bought an extra 2GB for the “media center” box that I’m using as a workstation at the moment. With the quad-core CPU there is plenty of horsepower for running virtual machines which are useful for all sorts of development purposes. But RAM quickly becomes a limiting factor and I wanted more than my existing 2GB.
So I order a pair of high quality RAM from NewEgg, put them in the other two slots and.. Nothing. The machine won’t POST. The power light comes on, but nothing- no beep, no video, nothing diagnostic that I can see to help figure it out.
Ok, maybe the new RAM is bad. I pull it out, pull the old ones out and put the new ones in by themselves. Works fine. Hmmm. I tried a BIOS upgrade and several other things but so far no luck.
The only hint I can find online is that I might want to try increasing the voltages to the RAM. Since I don’t know what “normal” is this scares me a bit to be honest. Any other thoughts? Each pair works on its own, each is a matched pair, PC6400 (800mhz DDR2), in the appropriate sockets. Similar timings on both sets although they aren’t from the same manufacturer.