I have been pretty happy with my SOYO KT333 Ultra Platinum so far, I really must say.

I am in a situation though and I seek your advice.

I had 2 x 256 sticks of PC2700 DDR from Crucial. one i bought at newegg and the other I got from them direct. Then recently I came upon a coupon for $25 off any crucial purchase (thanks www.slickdeals.net) and got a stick of 512 from them for $43 shipped! What a deal! Before I ordered from them I called to make sure I wouldnt have any compatability issues. They checked my motherboard against their tech support records and "have never had any stability complaints" (I posted here asking about all 3 slots being full, yada yada)

When she said "we have never..." i asked "what happens if I get my stick and it has trouble?" and the woman on the other end said "I'm sure we would work with you because we dont want you having to sacrifice 256 MB that you paid for."

So I ordered with confidence.

I get the package, and viola, the system posts, it boots, it idles, it surfes the net, it plays PlanetSide for about 2 minutes and gives me the XP "Windows is shutting down to prevent damage to your computer" blue screen of death, dumps physical memory and sits there waiting for me to cut the power.

I reboot and get into windows, check the disk cache, increase it a tad, defrag the drive, reboot, try again, same thing. Blue screen.

I didnt have much at all to loose, and I had just backed up the week before on CD's so I went ahead and did a reformat on the system. It got 99% thru the XP install and I got another bluescreen. I killed the power and went to bed.

Day 2: I open her up, actually I never closed her, so I reached inside, yoinked a stick of 256 and installed XP no problem.

System is running flawlessly (and faster with 768 of RAM vs 512).

So I call Crucial and jump thru the standard Tech support hoops and refrence my pre-purchase call where they said they would "work with me".

Would you care to guess what "work with me means?

It means they are offering me $18 for one of the sticks of 256 that I bought from them, nothing for the one I bought from newegg and I can apply that whopping $18 toward another stick of 512.

And thus we come to my question...

Should I jump on the 2nd stick of 512, or should I save up a little and buy a motherboard (nForce2) that will support all 3 of my current sticks of ram?

Opinions, I need opinions!

Also, have you any suggestions on things I can try to get the 3 sticks running stable on my current config?

They are all 3 CAS 2.5 and I have them at default speed and rated in the BIOS at "By SPD".

default volts and everything. Suggestions, ideas?


Thanks Pimps.

if it were me, I'd talk to a manager or something and then send 2 256MB sticks back to them for a 512 ... FOR FREE...they promised to help...all you have to do is talk to the right person...escalate until you finally get what you want

ok, thats one option, I'll try that. but just in case.......

Others?

You dont have another KT-333 board in the house do you? If you did or know someone that does you could try all 3 sticks in their. Another option would be to slightly raise the voltage maybe? Maybe the 3 sticks a trying to draw to much voltage? Just an idea.

what is "a lot" of voltage? What amount of an increase would be safe, or "safe"?

THanks for the suggestion.

Id say one or two notches. whatever your bios will let you do. Their usually in .05 increases i believe. So if your ram is set to 2.70, bump it to 2.75 or 2.80. That little increase shouldnt hurt the ram. And if it doesnt work you can always bump it back down.

default was 2.5 so i tried 2.6 (.1 incriments, not .05 in this case) and it rebooted with 2 internet explorers, folding@home, and an MP3 playing. So I bumped it to 2.7 and now im downloading 3dmark2003, posting here, downloading MP3;s playing one, and running folding@home stable.....hmmm, could it be too good to be true?

I think ive had the same problem you had with the blue screen of death. And from what ive read it was most likely caused by your ram (probably the one you pulled out since you haven't had a problem since). So that stick is probably defected and has to be returned anyways. Try using that as an excuse to get rid of both sticks and get one 512 instead.

eh, running stable so far, gonna try some games and 3d benches

boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom

crashed to desktop after trying to load a BF1942 map and failed to connect to several CS servers.

Ill try a single player game of something, any me 3dmark installation was corrupt, I smell trouble.

booooooooo, more crashes, reverting to 768 and starting to shop for motherboards.

damn sorry BZA. I thought it might work. If your gonna get a board id recommend. the abit nf7-s, epox 8rad+ 8rad3+, or the gigabyte board that BA has. The 8rad+ is probably the cheapest of those. running about 83 on newegg.

thanks for the tips. appreciate it much i do.


shop soon going I will.

AH-HA!

I talked to the crucial nazi's some more and they agreed to take both 256's for a nominal fee and sell me a 512 for $30. I guess that is as good a deal as I could expect. one of the 256's is a year old and the other is 18 months.

A new mobo will have to wait i suppose.

good job...have fun with your *new* jiggabyte of RAM

jigga-what? jigga-who?