RAM Upgrade question for PC experts

OK....5 months ago I decided to replace my computer Mobo and it gradually turned into a "full rebuild" so now everything is new and nothing is left of the original.
I bought a pre-assembled Mobo and CPU (ASUS M4N82 Deluxe and AMD 11 X4 635). I needed new RAM and ran a scan from an online store and they suggested PC2-5300 667Mhz RAM.In the event I bought 8GB in 4 x 2GB sticks.
The brand name they sold me is DANE-ELEC.This maker is not on the Qualified Vendors List for the Mobo.
I've had endles problems with this PC; the main one was that if I install more than 4GB of the RAM I get no picture on the monitor.It doesn't matter which of the sticks I use, the result is the same so I know they are not inherently faulty.
It also crashes frequently with BAD_POOL_HEADER and SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION the most common BSOD's
Worse still the only version of Trainz which will install is TRS2004!
I asked about this on a PC forum last night and the resident guru said it must be a problem with the Mobo.
When I phoned the place I bought it from, the guy there said that DANE-ELEC was a cheap unbranded name similar to Tesco's Baked Beans and I should buy some "proper" RAM like Kingston, OCZ or Corsair!
Do any of you think he is right and this would likely solve the problem?
I'm not anxious to spend £££'s if I am throwing good money after bad.

HAF932 case
ASUS M4N82 Deluxe Mobo
AMD 11 x4 635 CPU
Palit Geforce GTX460 1GB GPU
WD Velociraptor 300GB HDD
WD Caviar Black 1TB HDD
Samsung 22X Writemaster ODD
CoolerMaster 700 Watt PSU
4GB DDR2 RAM
AeroCool V12XT Fan Controller
Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit OS

Asus boards tend to be picky about memory. Asus' tend to like the good stuff, not the off-brands. I've heard of Dane-elec but don't know much about them. However, based on past experience in similar situations, you probably are going to have to write off either the board or the memory, whichever costs less to replace.

I tend to lean towards replacing the mobo too though because, for one, you've got a lot invested in memory. Asus has a reputation for giving you a lot of features for the money, but a lot of people don't factor in that you are more limited in memory selection. At least with a new board you can probably use your memory (especially if its on the approval list) and have more options open should you need to expand or replace memory or anything else. Also, being very picky, there's no guarantee your Asus will like new memory unless it's exactly what's specified on the approval list. At least with other brands, I usually don't have to worry if the exact memory I'm buying is on the approval list as long as I'm sticking with approved manufacturers and similar memory.

Personally I'd co to ebuyer.com and buy some crucial memory.

CT2KIT25664AA800 is 56 quid for 4 gigs ie 2 by 2 gigs and try that. Go to Crucial's site and confirm the part number. Double check its on ASUS approved memory list for the board. If it works fine it was probably a memory problem, if it doesn't talk to the tech again and mention it still doesn't work even with Crucial memory. Crucial are normally reckoned to be the top of the memory chain but I'm certain some one will dispute this.

Your motherboard is a little odd in that the memory set up is dependent on the cpu by the way so it might be worth while digging in the ASUS site to see which AMD cpu supports which memory configuration.

Memory gets tested, reject memory gets retested and sold under Brand X names such as Dane-ele etc.

ASUS had a good reputation for motherboards and I'm still very comfortable with their high end boards. Next time perhaps go to newegg first and see which one has the highest number of positive reviews. It's not infallible but its not bad even if you don't buy from newegg.

Cheerio John

The RAM isn't a brand on the Qualified Vendors List. Now call me cynical but I reasoned that was simply because they had some kind of backdoor deal with those vendors - in the same way that someone said PC review shows are often sponsored by hardware manufacturers so they'll be "partial" to those manufacturers products.
I'm not looking to replace the Mobo unless as a last resort partly on cost and partly because of the practical side that the RAM is easy to replace.
I've had a look at a few of the main brands - OCZ,Corsair etc- and in the case of Corsair they all seem to be out of stock. My old RAM will go on Ebay so hopefully I'll be able to claw back a little of my money.

lewisner said:

OK....5 months ago I decided to replace my computer Mobo and it gradually turned into a "full rebuild" so now everything is new and nothing is left of the original.
I bought a pre-assembled Mobo and CPU (ASUS M4N82 Deluxe and AMD 11 X4 635). I needed new RAM and ran a scan from an online store and they suggested PC2-5300 667Mhz RAM.In the event I bought 8GB in 4 x 2GB sticks.
The brand name they sold me is DANE-ELEC.This maker is not on the Qualified Vendors List for the Mobo.

Click to expand...

The motherboard you are using (ASUS M4N82 Deluxe) uses an Nvidia chipset (nForce 980a). Nvidia chipsets have been known to be a little finicky with memory (I experienced the same issue in the past with their 680 and 780 chipsets).

I’ve used Asus, Gigabyte, Intel, DFI and Evga motherboards over the last ten years and Asus hasn’t been anymore “picky” about memory then the others.

That being said I would not recommend using “cheap” memory either. Stick with memory from a well known reputable manufacturer.

johnwhelan said:

Personally I'd co to ebuyer.com and buy some crucial memory.

CT2KIT25664AA800 is 56 quid for 4 gigs ie 2 by 2 gigs and try that. Go to Crucial's site and confirm the part number. Double check its on ASUS approved memory list for the board. If it works fine it was probably a memory problem, if it doesn't talk to the tech again and mention it still doesn't work even with Crucial memory. Crucial are normally reckoned to be the top of the memory chain but I'm certain some one will dispute this.

Your motherboard is a little odd in that the memory set up is dependent on the cpu by the way so it might be worth while digging in the ASUS site to see which AMD cpu supports which memory configuration.

Memory gets tested, reject memory gets retested and sold under Brand X names such as Dane-ele etc.

ASUS had a good reputation for motherboards and I'm still very comfortable with their high end boards. Next time perhaps go to newegg first and see which one has the highest number of positive reviews. It's not infallible but its not bad even if you don't buy from newegg.

Cheerio John

Click to expand...

"Memory gets tested, reject memory gets retested and sold under Brand X names such as Dane-ele etc."
For real? I'd heard that most PC manufacturers re-used old hardware but I'd never heard that.

"Next time perhaps go to newegg first and see which one has the highest number of positive reviews."

The experience of building my own PC has made me much more savvy about reading reviews before buying anything.
I'm tempted by two used OCZ Reaper 2GB sticks on ebay but they stand at £51 with one day to go and they look suspiciously like they have been overheated.*Note this is wrong that was a pair of 1GB Reapers I was looking at.However the vendor of the 2GB Reapers is using "Stock" photos which I don't trust.

Looking at the ASUS QVL it lists 667, 800 and 1066Mhz RAM but of the 2-3 Crucial sticks in each range the highest is 1GB I.E if I got Crucial I could not have more than 4GB.

I've used the 680i extensively with memory of all kinds (especially for cheap RAID builds) and it wasn't very picky though I always use Crucial, Corsair, Kingston or OCZ memory, even if it's not what's named on a vendor approval list.

lewisner said:

"Memory gets tested, reject memory gets retested and sold under Brand X names such as Dane-ele etc."
For real? I'd heard that most PC manufacturers re-used old hardware but I'd never heard that.

"Next time perhaps go to newegg first and see which one has the highest number of positive reviews."

The experience of building my own PC has made me much more savvy about reading reviews before buying anything.
I'm tempted by two used OCZ Reaper 2GB sticks on ebay but they stand at £51 with one day to go and they look suspiciously like they have been overheated.*Note this is wrong that was a pair of 1GB Reapers I was looking at.However the vendor of the 2GB Reapers is using "Stock" photos which I don't trust.

Looking at the ASUS QVL it lists 667, 800 and 1066Mhz RAM but of the 2-3 Crucial sticks in each range the highest is 1GB I.E if I got Crucial I could not have more than 4GB.

Click to expand...

That's what I was talking about in my first post. With Asus (in my experience - it's been a few years since i used an Asus mobo) if you don't use EXACTLY THE MEMORY they specify, then you're on your own as to whether or not it will work. With other mobos, I've never had to worry, as long as I stick with good vendors who are somewhere on their approval lists; I don't have to match size and chip ID precisely.

lewisner said:

"Next time perhaps go to newegg first and see which one has the highest number of positive reviews."

The experience of building my own PC has made me much more savvy about reading reviews before buying anything.

Click to expand...

Your best bet is to take a look in a real hardware forum to see what memory is being used (and the results) with Nvidia nForce 980a chipset based motherboards.

Newegg.com is one of the last places to go for any useful information on hardware.


You might start here -


http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=58



Some discussion on the M4N82 Deluxe -

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...e&id=20100420081722062&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

Cheers! Gotta go out for a couple of pints of Falling Down Water now but I'll have a serious look at that when I get back.

lewisner said:

"Memory gets tested, reject memory gets retested and sold under Brand X names such as Dane-ele etc."
For real? I'd heard that most PC manufacturers re-used old hardware but I'd never heard that.

"Next time perhaps go to newegg first and see which one has the highest number of positive reviews."

The experience of building my own PC has made me much more savvy about reading reviews before buying anything.
I'm tempted by two used OCZ Reaper 2GB sticks on ebay but they stand at £51 with one day to go and they look suspiciously like they have been overheated.*Note this is wrong that was a pair of 1GB Reapers I was looking at.However the vendor of the 2GB Reapers is using "Stock" photos which I don't trust.

Looking at the ASUS QVL it lists 667, 800 and 1066Mhz RAM but of the 2-3 Crucial sticks in each range the highest is 1GB I.E if I got Crucial I could not have more than 4GB.

Click to expand...

Memory is made by a sort of photocopy process, making the initial mask and owning the very expensive photocopier costs the money. So basically any memory you buy probably comes from maybe half a dozen big plants. Micron for example has one or two, their retail name is Crucial. Each time some idiot makes a smaller process then this means you can get more memory cells in the same size however you have to spend mega bucks to make a new production line.

As the chips come off the line they get tested and graded. There are more companies with their brand name on memory chips than there are plants and the chips from the same line get sold under different names and different prices.

Cheerio John

As a matter of interest I read reviews of the OCZ Reaper sticks and they were good but bearing in mind remarks on another thread about "yesterdays technology" their design is about 2 years old now and all the sites I have looked at in the UK say they are "out of stock". If I was to buy these would I simply be lumbering myself with antiques?

corsair 4gb 1333mhz CL9 ddr3. £40.42 from amazon.
Any help?

fran1 said:

corsair 4gb 1333mhz CL9 ddr3. £40.42 from amazon.
Any help?

Click to expand...

Seeing as the ASUS M4N82 Deluxe uses DDR2 I don’t think that RAM is going to help.

In addition look at those timings, yikes, cas-9 and it’s only running at 1333MHz.

djt said:

Seeing as the ASUS M4N82 Deluxe uses DDR2 I don’t think that RAM is going to help.

In addition look at those timings, yikes, cas-9 and it’s only running at 1333MHz.

Click to expand...

Corsair 4 gig 800 mhz c5 ddr2. £52.83p. from amazon.

fran1 said:

Corsair 4 gig 800 mhz c5 ddr2. £52.83p. from amazon.

Click to expand...

That should work and much better cas-5 timings at 800MHz although back when I was running AMD/DDR2 setups cas-2/800MHz was the ideal. I’m not sure you can even get C4 DDR2 anymore though.

djt said:

That should work and much better cas-5 timings at 800MHz although back when I was running AMD/DDR2 setups cas-2/800MHz was the ideal. I’m not sure you can even get C4 DDR2 anymore though.

Click to expand...

What is cas 5 ? Also I thought the faster in mhz the better.
Sorry for butting in on your post lewisner.

fran1 said:

What is cas 5 ? Also I thought the faster in mhz the better.

Click to expand...

It’s called cas latency, the lower the number the better. Just because the RAM is faster in speed (MHz) doesn’t mean its better.


High speed RAM with loose timings can be “slower” than lower speed RAM with tight timings.

djt said:

It’s called cas latency, the lower the number the better. Just because the RAM is faster in speed (MHz) doesn’t mean its better.


High speed RAM with loose timings can be “slower” than lower speed RAM with tight timings.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I will inwardly digest that. by the way you can get cl 4 at 533mhz.

djt said:

That should work and much better cas-5 timings at 800MHz although back when I was running AMD/DDR2 setups cas-2/800MHz was the ideal. I’m not sure you can even get C4 DDR2 anymore though.

Click to expand...

I can't find it and wish I could. CAS 5 is not ideal, but no options.


Try to find the following as Approved Memory and Good Producers and also Approved for your motherboard:

CORSAIR
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]BoxP/N:TWIN2X4096-6400C4DHX(CM2X2048-6400C4DHX)[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]DDR2 800[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]4096MB(Kit of 2)[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]DS[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]N/A[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]Heat-Sink Package[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]4-4-4-12[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]2.10[/FONT][/FONT]

GEIL
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]GE24GB800C4QC[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]DDR2 800[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]4096MB(Kitof4)[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]DS[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]N/A[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]Heat-Sink Package[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]4-4-4-12[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]2.0[/FONT][/FONT]


I have this and seems to be fine for E8400 Dual with MSI Motherboard except for voltage not allowing overclocking:

CORSAIR
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]BoxP/N:TWIN2X4096-6400C5(CM2X2048-6400C5)[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]DDR2 800[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]4096MB(Kit of 2)[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]DS[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]N/A[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]Heat-Sink Package[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]5-5-5-18[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]1.80[/FONT][/FONT]