RAM Question (1 Viewer)

[porky996t]

I have upgraded the RAM in one of my Zotac ZBox ID41 clients from 1 x 2Gb to 1 x 4Gb. All fine and working great.

I then decided to use the spare 2Gb stick and pair it up with the other 2Gb in the kitchen ZBox ID41 to give 2 x 2Gb. After installing it will not boot. It boots fine with both 2Gb sticks installed on their own as 1 x 2Gb, but not forming 4Gb, 2 x 2Gb, installed together.

The RAM details are:-

1. Crucial - 2Gb 204 pin DDR3 1333Mhz (8 x 256K chips)
2. Kingston - 2Gb 204 pin DDR3 1333Mhz (16 x 128K chips)

Anybody have any ideas?

 

[kiwijunglist]

If your motherboard has 4 RAM slots then make sure the RAM is in the same channel

eg.

RAM | EMPTY | RAM | EMPTY

or if the ram has different timings then run them in seperate channels

eg.

RAM | RAM | EMPTY | EMPTY

[DOUBLEPOST=1363273103][/DOUBLEPOST]oh I just checked you only have 2 slots

Try swapping the 2 sticks around. If that doesn't work you might have to manually enter the RAM timings/voltages in BIOS. You can write down the automatically detected timings for each single stick individually, then when you run both sticks at once manually set the timings to the stick that had the loosest timing.

If that doesn't work then either 1. The mismatched RAM is incompatible with each other (This sometimes happens if you don't have a matched pair) or 2. the 2nd RAM slot on the motherboard is faulty.

If you had 2x identical RAM sticks that you could try on the motherboard then this would eliminate the later.

 

[RonD]

and after a 2nd cup of coffee, this was not the question

the zotacusa web page says the following for memory (on right side). not sure if this is your exact system.

ZOTAC ZBOX ID41 PLUS [ZBOX-ID41-PLUS-U]
Memory Size2GB Installed (Up to 4GB)
Memory Slots2 x 204-pin SO-DIMM
Memory TypeDDR3 800 SO-DIMM

http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-id41-plus.html

looks like this board uses the Intel Atom D510/525 CPUs, Intel says both support
Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 4 GB

http://ark.intel.com/compare/49490,43098

 

[Owlsroost]

It might just be a limitation of the chipset or bios e.g. maybe 2 x single-sided modules are OK, but not 2 x double-sided (or 1 x single + 1 x double), or possibly it doesn't support mixed modules at all i.e. they have to be a matched pair.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Mismatched ram will run slower anyway, so keep the one with the fastest timings

 

[receiverbox]

Yes, Intel's Atom Platform is really limited in controlling and accessing to many memory chips. 16 chips in total on the memory bus could be the limit - need to check. If it has to many chips - it doesn't boot. (That is the default behaviour of Intels...)

 

[porky996t]

Thanks receiverbox, good to know that there is a logical reason. It's not an issue really, as I'll just get a 4Gb strip instead