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Problem with Dual Channel?

884 Views 5 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  Volt-Schwibe
I just bought a Gigabyte K8N-Pro SLI motherboard. It has 4 ram slots, 2 purple and 2 orange for dual channel. I had 2x 256mb sticks (DDR400) running in it single channel. I bought a 512mb stick (still DDR400) but no matter what combination I put the RAM in the colored slots, I can only get a max of 786mb of ram starting up. I can get 786 out of 1x 256 and 1x512 too. In some combinations its 512 and in 1 or 2 it was 256.

So 1 or more sticks of ram just gets disabled for some reason with 3 sticks. Is my motherboard incapable of using 3 ram sticks? There is no way in the bios to turn off dual channel (bios version F4).

I noticed that the 512 stick is dual side, while the 256 are single side. I dont know anything about dual or single sided ram though. Will I have to buy another $60 stick of 512 just to get my first one working?
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welcome to tsf
is the 512 on the qvl list on your motherboard site? [qualified ram]
on the gigabyte K8N it will disable ram in certain instances.

although i don't see an issue with your 512 meg ram and the board, there may be an issue between the 256's and the 512.

if i am correct, you have to use either 1, 2 or 4 of the slots, not 3.

what i suggest here, is buy another identical 512.

then you may even manage to make it run dual channel.
ok, it seems that it does in fact matter which slots you use.

here is a link to the manual in case you don't have one. http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/Manual/manual_k8nusli_e.pdf

here is a picture i found in the manual.

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Thanks a lot. I do have the manual, but I figured there may be a way to get the ram working, since that says it would cause the system to be unable to boot, which it does fine. I guess it just disables 1 slot instead. Oh well, now I have to spend another $65... as if a $500 upgrade to my computer wasnt enough!

Again, thanks for all your help. Pretty quick replies!
in the meantime, while you are waiting for that ram, it wouldn't hurt to just run the 512.

sorry i couldn't come up with any better advice.

the more i read that chart, i see that to use 1 ram will work in either slot 1 or 3, and to use 2 ram will work in slots 1 and 2 or 1 and 3 or 3 and 4 and that there just isn't any way to insert 3 sticks.
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