Luck of the Irish (RAM problem)

[Zero Prime]

Even though I only have a little Irish in me Murphy's Law still wants to kick me in the jimmy. I went out and got a new 1 gig stick of ram. All I had was 512MBs. Right when I get home my wife turns on the computer. Oh well, I'll put it in later. Then I hear it. That darn beeping noise. Every 2 seconds all I could here was that beep. My wife asked me why it was doing that and all I could do is look at that brand new shiny stick of ram I was holding. I took out the old stick and popped in the new one and everything works again. Hmm, I thought. Maybe if I put the old stick in the open slot it might work. Nope. Doesn't it figure. I wanted 1.5 gigs of ram and now I only got 1 gig. Well, it's twice as much as I had and everything is running faster for me now, including 20 seconds till the login screen and 15 seconds until the desktop loads. I guess I can settle for that.

[pch.shot]

I,m sure you already know this.
It is always best to use ram brands(types) that your mobo suggests.
If you are using more than 1 stick buy matching pairs.
Depending on how much time you have, double check and make sure the ram is firmly seated.
pch

[LeadFingers]

Your Ram story beats mine.
In mine I came out looking like an Idiot.

Best buy was having one of their stupid-good sales on ram, and I thought
why not, it's cheep an I wanted to bump up the ram in my #1 linux box anyway.
being lazy, I decided rather than break open the computer
it would be easier to just look at the box the motherboard came in.
Yep! like I thought, DDR2
I rush down to the store and get the last pack, patting myself on the back all the way home.
"I'm such a smart bargain-shopper, that box should fly on 3Gigs of ram"
Drag the computer out just enough so I can wiggle myself around and unhook the snake-pit of cords,
pull it out, flop it on its side & break it open, just as I reached in to move the cables out of the way,
Realized I had looked at the wrong motherboard box.
I'd grabbed the one for my windows machine, the one with plenty of ram, the one I never use anymore.
I just sat there for a few moments staring at the open tower, afraid to to look and see what type memory it used. Finally, saying a silent prayer to the patron saint of computers, I pulled out the stick of... DDR1
That's right, this smart bargain-shopper now has an unopened pack of ram waiting on a new motherboard.

[Zero Prime]

I have an MSI Mobo. From the reviews I read it is notorious for not accepting certain ram modules. The odd part was is that they are both PNY. But it wasn't that they didn't work together, it's that the old one died right before I could put the new ram in. I checked for dust and reseated it and everything. At least with the new 1gig stick things run a lot smoother. May pick up another 1gig stick from Newegg someday. I'm trying to get as much life out of this old AMD64 board as I can.

[DaddyX3]

I'm sure you know that some boards (actually most boards I believe) are very picky about running different size sticks in certain slots and is ok while installing them to other slots. In other words, there are certain combo's that work with mix match ram sticks and others will not work at all. For example you can only run mix match sets in slot A and slot C. Don't know if this is your case or not, but a look in the mobo manual will clarify this.

[Zero Prime]

Won't matter. The original RAM died before I could put in the new RAM. That's why I said luck of the Irish.