Rocketpop
New Member
First post! Nice to meet you. I hope someone can help me with this.
Important components:
Q6600 Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz
Patriot Extreme Performance DDR2 800 PC2 6400 4x1 gig
(also: Kingston ValueRAM DDR2 667 PC2 5300 has also been tried with the same results)
XFX Geforce 8800 GTS 512 XXX Alpha Dog Edition
610W power supply
I can't use more than two sticks of RAM in the P6N Platinum. There are the green channel A slots and the orange channel B slots. I'm trying to use four sticks, and if any combination of sticks are used with an orange slot occupied, the system will not completely boot. If only one stick is used in either orange slot along with one or both of the green slots occupied, the system will begin to load Windows, but immediately restart and say Windows did not successfully boot last time, with the normal and safe mode options etc. Any selection causes it to restart after a few seconds. This will repeat ad infinitum.
If both orange slots are occupied, the system will still power on, but it will not beep or POST at all and the monitor will not indicate a connection (shows an orange light if idle, blue if active). Both green slots occupied work fine, but if an orange slot has a stick in it, whether there are any sticks in the green slots or not, one of those two situations mentioned above will happen depending on if there are one or two sticks in the orange slots. All sticks and slots have been tested and none has been singled out from either batch.
I replaced the motherboard once with an identical model and ended up with the same problem. As I mentioned earlier, I also tried replacing the RAM. BIOS settings have been updated and tweaked extensively to fit either RAM configuration with no change in outcome.
I've been on tech support from MSI and Patriot and both say there should be no compatibility issues with any of the parts. After the second batch of RAM failed, the Kingston, I called MSI again, and was told that a special BIOS update not available on the web site was needed, due to the Q6600, and would be emailed to me. The update applied and changed a few BIOS options but there still was no fix.
Bottom line is: Orange channel B slots can't be used in either identical motherboard, and I want to run four sticks.
Any insight would be graciously appreciated. Thank you!
Important components:
Q6600 Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz
Patriot Extreme Performance DDR2 800 PC2 6400 4x1 gig
(also: Kingston ValueRAM DDR2 667 PC2 5300 has also been tried with the same results)
XFX Geforce 8800 GTS 512 XXX Alpha Dog Edition
610W power supply
I can't use more than two sticks of RAM in the P6N Platinum. There are the green channel A slots and the orange channel B slots. I'm trying to use four sticks, and if any combination of sticks are used with an orange slot occupied, the system will not completely boot. If only one stick is used in either orange slot along with one or both of the green slots occupied, the system will begin to load Windows, but immediately restart and say Windows did not successfully boot last time, with the normal and safe mode options etc. Any selection causes it to restart after a few seconds. This will repeat ad infinitum.
If both orange slots are occupied, the system will still power on, but it will not beep or POST at all and the monitor will not indicate a connection (shows an orange light if idle, blue if active). Both green slots occupied work fine, but if an orange slot has a stick in it, whether there are any sticks in the green slots or not, one of those two situations mentioned above will happen depending on if there are one or two sticks in the orange slots. All sticks and slots have been tested and none has been singled out from either batch.
I replaced the motherboard once with an identical model and ended up with the same problem. As I mentioned earlier, I also tried replacing the RAM. BIOS settings have been updated and tweaked extensively to fit either RAM configuration with no change in outcome.
I've been on tech support from MSI and Patriot and both say there should be no compatibility issues with any of the parts. After the second batch of RAM failed, the Kingston, I called MSI again, and was told that a special BIOS update not available on the web site was needed, due to the Q6600, and would be emailed to me. The update applied and changed a few BIOS options but there still was no fix.
Bottom line is: Orange channel B slots can't be used in either identical motherboard, and I want to run four sticks.
Any insight would be graciously appreciated. Thank you!
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