[IceFire]

Quick hardware question for those who may know. I've got a couple of year old system with 2GB of RAM in it right now. I'd like to bump that up to a total of 4 or 6 GB depending on price. The sticks in there right now are a pair of 1GB Mushkin DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500+) running with the timings 5-5-4-12.

When looking at memory offered by Muskin at present in this range the timings are all 5-5-5-15. Potential problem or me worrying about small details most people ignore?

BTW: In case it's important the mobo is an Asus P5KC.

[Nemesis6]

Quick hardware question for those who may know. I've got a couple of year old system with 2GB of RAM in it right now. I'd like to bump that up to a total of 4 or 6 GB depending on price. The sticks in there right now are a pair of 1GB Mushkin DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500+) running with the timings 5-5-4-12.

When looking at memory offered by Muskin at present in this range the timings are all 5-5-5-15. Potential problem or me worrying about small details most people ignore?

BTW: In case it's important the mobo is an Asus P5KC.

Potential problem that's most likely not gonna affect you. I have a friend who broke the timing equilibrium by adding another 1 GB of ram with different timings, and he hasn't had any problems. The biggest problem would be speed issues I think -- inconsistant performance if you're using it all.

[Fury]

You're better off ditching those sticks and replacing them with new ones.

[Grizzly]

You're better off ditching those sticks and replacing them with new ones.

Yeah. A pair of identical 2 GB's would work faster, especially those designed to be used in that setup.

[Nuke]

ive never managed to get ram to run stable at their rated timings and frequency. especially with high end hardware. i kinda wish ram specs would indicate actual speed and not what the ram can theoretically be overclocked to.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

BTW: In case it's important the mobo is an Asus P5KC.

Yes it does.  http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/modelsinfo.asp?SysID=37994&mfr=ASUS%2FASmobile&model=P5KC+Motherboard&search_type=&root=us&LinkBack=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kingston.com&Sys=37994-ASUS%2FASmobile-P5KC+Motherboard&distributor=0&submit1=Search

That system can only support 4gigs of DDR3 but 8gigs of DDR2

[IceFire]

You're better off ditching those sticks and replacing them with new ones.

Or else what might be the consequences

I'm going back to school and trying to do this on the cheap and nothing ever turns out to be cheap!
On top of that my PSU started making an annoying buzzing noise.  Ohhh good!

[IceFire]

Alright... so I took the good advice of not mixing and matching, however, I've run into difficulties. I bought Mushkin DDR3 1333mhz 2x2GB kit which should work on the board.

When I put the RAM in the system wouldn't post for a while.  So I took one stick out thinking maybe one of the sticks was bad. It booted just fine on one stick (I alternated). So then I managed to get it to work on both new sticks eventually but the system was unstable. It crashed on boot up a couple of times. I managed to go into the BIOS and update the BIOS version to the very latest from Asus. This seemed more stable and I was able to work in Windows and play StarCraft II and watch HD video without any crashes at that point.

But I wasn't convinced so I ran memtest86 and the system is still unstable while running through the memtest (goes for about 5-10 minutes then shuts down).  I downloaded the latest version of memtest and ran that as well... same problem. SO... figuring the RAM was defective or incompatible with my system I swapped it out and put in my old memory.  Out of curiosity I ran memtest with my old memory installed... exact same 5-10 minute shut down problem.

SO... advice?  I'm thinking either the motherboard memory controller has issues or the PSU isn't running stable voltages.  It's a 4 year old computer that gets daily abuse.

Maybe it's time for a new one?

[Klaustrophobia]

first check your RAM settings in BIOS to make sure they are at rated speeds and timings.  i've seen the automatic option not use the right settings, so do it manually.

[Locutus of Borg]

Isn't 4GB a maximum for 32bit systems?

[Nuke]

Isn't 4GB a maximum for 32bit systems?

yea, but most cpus for the last 5 years have supported 64 bit. as low end computers require more than 4gb of ram, 32 bit will be officially obsolete in all but embedded applications.

[Liberator]

Without some finagling, 3.25 is maximum.

[qazwsx]

Without some finagling, 3.25 is maximum.

4GB total, Memory-mapped devices (such as your video card) will use some of that physical address space, as will the BIOS ROMs, hence why you'll always see less than 4GB on a 32bit system

[Nuke]

about 20 months ago i bought me a laptop for 800 bucks, it came with the most ram that you could cram into a 32 bit system. it was also a slightly older model, but it had a good gpu. this was before windows 7 came out, and frankly i was supprised that it even came in a 32 bit flavor (i blame the netbook craze). needless to say im supprised 32 bit is still an option, and i look forward to the day when i can say with pride that 32 bit is dead.

[Bobboau]

man I remember when 32 bit was hot ****.

[S-99]

I assume nuke has something with a processor capable of 64 bit at least?

For ram, you want identical sticks and pair them together so you can dual channel. I got away with this in my older desktop barely with memory sticks of the same stats but different brands. Well i was able to dual channel doing that.

[Nuke]

i only run 64 bit operating systems. when you have 8 gb ram, you need to.

when i upgrade ram, i try to upgrade with the same exact model number that i have in the first pair of slots. of course ive come to the realization that its probibly better to replace your existing sticks, because sometimes you have a hard time getting the same performance out of 4 that you can with 2. of course memory is one of those things that has always given me problems.

[IceFire]

Don't worry... I've been using Windows 7 64bit since that came out. I figured I'd get up to 4GB at some point.  I've done some checking and the problem isn't RAM... seems like either the mobo or the power supply is about to bite the big one. So... I'm probably just going to buy a new Core i7 setup. The video card is fairly new so I can keep that going for a while yet.