Cooling RAM??

dregin

Hey,

I'm looking for advice on cooling RAM (if RAM cooling even exists).

I recently bought a PC. The machine came with 3 sticks of 256Mb DDR PC2700 266Mhz RAM. The motherboard is a Gigabyte (GA-8SR533P).When I ran any CPU intensive applications the PC would blue screen and then Restart.
I am currently running the PC with only 2 sticks and CPU intensive applications now lag instead of crashing the computer. I have tried all combinations of the 3 sticks so, it's not any one stick that is the problem. I've also flashed the BIOS with it's most current version.
I thought the RAM could be overheating so I bought some copper RAM heatsinks in Maplin. Unfortunately when I attached them to the RAM I realised that the slots weren't far enough apart to accomodate them

Can anyone help me with solving this problem, namely cooling RAM. It could be the board itself that cant deal with 768Mb of DDR RAM and I'm not over clocking or anything (at least I don't think so, the previous owner could have been up to something with it although I assume most default settings would have been activated when I flashed the BIOS).

Thanks for your time.
Dregin

lotas

hmmmm. im sugesting, and im not slagging, but mount a fan on top of the dimms. the air should go down. this may help. dont think it would be that your board cant support more then 512mb memory, and the reson i think this is DDR2700 is quite new. i have machines at home that are about 3 years old and support up to 1Gb+ of memory. not sure any other options. hows the cooling in your system? do you have a lot of fans?

Cyrus

are u suing windows 98 ? has a problem with more than 512mb of ram

dregin

I'm on Win2k Pro. I've only got the 2 case fans I've tried switiching one of them to face down towards the dimms already but the same thing started happening agin.

I guess I'll have to see about getting more fans in there.

Thanks for the help.

tribble

It doesn't sound like they're overheating tbh.
Once they have any sort of breeze accross them they will be happy.

Try this -
remove all the sticks 'cept one and try use the pc.
Is it stable?

If not then sub in a different stick.

If yes then it sounds like a mismatch or else one of the other sticks has problems. Try get two working together. If these work then its almost certainly a fu><ored module.

If none of the sticks work on their own then it's a motherboard problem or (unlikly) you have DDR2100/1600 running at 2700 - try change the drop the FSB in the bios to it's lowers setting.


tribble

CombatCow

Good advice tribble - process of elimination.
On the other hand if it is a cooling problem this might intrest you.http://www.thermaltake.com/products/memory/activekits.htm

They sell them in Maplin but cant remember how much it is,good luck.

CombatCow

Ryo Hazuki

Glue 1 cent coins to each of the chips and put a fan above the RAM.

Although I dont think heat is the problem.

dregin

I've tried all combinations of 2 sticks and they all worked, so I'm nearly sure it's not any one of them that's the problem. I also got copper heatsinks for them (a.k.a. 1 cent coins I'm guessing )
I'll try each of the sticks seperately, although I'm nearly sure I've already tried this. If they all work seperately I'll try lowering the FSB setting. I have no experience at all of over/under clocking a system so I'm not sure how successful my BIOS fiddling will be but sure we'll see.

Cheers.
Dregin

lotas

memtest86. the most interesting program, well maybe not interesting, but very handy program. it can be burned to a floppy or CDRom. when your system boots it checks your memory. i had problems like this too. i had 3 256mb dimms in my machine. every once and a while, win2k would crash. it always seemed to happen when i ran memory intencive apps. when i ran the test, i ran it with seperate dimms in the system. takes a while to complete, but give you a detailed report at the end. i found out 2 of my 3 dimms where dead. brought them back and got new ones (Kingson ValueRam with the lifetime warrenty! handy!). you should try this.

dregin

Ok. I've tried each of the memory sticks individually and they all worked fine, if a little laggy (I sued battlefield1942 with 40 bots to see how it ran).
I then went into the BIOS and enabled "Linear Frequency Control". The CPU is now set to 100 and the DRAM to 200 Mhz, these being the defaults that came up when I enabled the Frequency Control and the lowest available Frequencies.

Lotas:
Thanks for that tip. I'm pretty busy at the moment, but I've downloaded that program and I'll give it a go over the weekend.

Thanks
Dregin

lotas

good luck! :P