Hi gang,

I just did a memory upgrade yesterday. I swapped out two sticks of 256 mg DDR 184 pin and replaced them with 2 sticks of 512. I'm running windows XP pro on a MSI k7n2g-L motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor.

The system boots up great, recognizes all the memory and runs fine for about 20 mins and then restarts itself in the middle of a good game of Counter-Strike that I used to be able to play for hours. So clearly, IMHO it's gotta be the memory, right? I've swapped banks, I've run each stick seperatly, and still get the same problem. No joy. :(

I even took the side off and ran a box fan to see if it was just getting too hot. No luck there either.

Both of the suspect sticks of memory are Kbyte brand. Maybe the byte part of the name is indicative of the performance. :p One is an Elixir M2U51264DS8HB3G-6k and the other is a VT something that I can't find information about.

THanks in advance.

Using generic RAM just doesn't work as well as it used to! Maybe system RAM types are getting too fast for "loose" timings and what-not, but it seems more and more mobo's are being picky about the RAM that goes in them.

Anyone else notice this?

Agree with saphalline. Stay away from generic memory, and go with the good stuff, like Crucial, Corsair, or Mushkin.

Reinstall the old RAM. If things work ok, then you have your answer.

I agree well hmm I don't remember?:D

You could check your memory settings in Bios and perhaps relax the settings slightly.

In my estimation 1 Gig of memory is a complete waste unless you are doing a lot of heavy graphics or video editing. My WinXP computers run just fine on 256 MB with several applications open including graphics.

If you want your games to run faster, take back the memory and get a better graphics card with the same money.

Hmmm... I agree with gwallen4 to a certain extent. XP works fine on 256MB RAM. Gaming is best done on 512MB, which is what you had originally. 1GB is nice (that's what I have) but not for those with tight budgets. I notice many games like more than 512MB of RAM, but your video card is most certainly the bigger factor.

A system with 256MB RAM and a Radeon 9800XT is going to beat the pants off a system with 1GB RAM and a Radeon 9200. :D

If you could tell us more about the rest of your hardware, that would help a lot.

A motherboard issue with your RAM would be different than just some lousy RAM that has internal issues...

You might want to try running a memory tester to see if your RAM can't remember what it's supposed to remember...

http://www.memtest86.com/

Thanks for the input all. Indeed we are moving towards concluding that you all were correct. Bad/cheap memory. I put a new power supply in the unit just to check that possibility. Same reset/restart problem. Then Alex and I took the new RAM out and replaced it with the old stuff. Now it runs just fine. sheesh! I put one of the suspect sticks in a different comp....ECS K7S5A pro mobo (pretty stable system and chip set, runs at 266mhz rather than the K7N2G-L which runs at 333mhz)and my wife has been working on it across the room all night, no problem at all. Go figure. Indeed some motherboards are princesses who need special ram and other ones are like an old truck that'll run on pig fat. Alex hasn't tried his Counter Strike addiction yet on his comp. but I'm thinking that it's probably fixed now.
peace,
Brad (nimnorf2 Alex88's dad)

Yep, cheap RAM. If it works at 266MHz instead of its "rated" :rolleyes: 333MHz, then that would tend to suggest cheap RAM. This doesn't totally exclude the possibility that the MSI board was picky, but cheap RAM is more likely.

I used to use generic RAM myself for secondary computer systems (and I still do for my ancient EDO systems) but these days the risk just isn't worth it. With so many threads lately dealing with systems killed by using bad RAM, name brand is now the "cheaper" option by far. Use it.