Asus a7v8x-x Dram speed- BIG mistake!

Hi Everyone,

I'm brand new to the forum so go easy on me, especially since I am posting to see if anyone can help me out with my BIG mistake....

I have a 3 year old Asus a7v8x-x motherboard, it's not exactly cutting edge but it's absolutely fine for what I do at home: namely downloading masses of stuff with Bittorrent.

Here's the problem: I've dismantled my girlfriend's old computer and used components in different machines: The hard drive in one machine, the cdr drive in another etc. On Tuesday night I was having a look at what else there was before I chucked it out and I saw two memory cards. "No point in wasting them...." I thought "Why not stick them in the two free memory slots on my Asus motherboard. It can old speed things up, right?"

Wrong.

I put them into the two spare slots and turned my PC on. There was a faint burning smell.... there was lots of beeping....there was no boot up.

Instead of loading up the operating system, I was only looking at the Bios configuration menu. I've used this before, but only to do really straightforward stuff like changing the boot device order. The message in red on the Bios screen tells me that the processor is expecting dram speed to be set to a minimum of 333Mhz, and that I should change the minimum dram speed to meet this requirement. (Sure enough, on closer inspection, the two presumably now fried memory cards that I had introduced have small labels on reading "100Mhz".)

Now, I'm absolutely lost here. I have no idea how to change my Dram speed and I haven't managed to find anything online to help me much although I think that that is probably due to my lack of familiarity with the corect terminology.

Can anyone help? Please tell me that there is a nice little switch that I just need to press and everything will be reset. Ok, I know that's not going to happen, but can anyone tell me how to reset my Dram speed and generally get eveything back the way it was?

I know....I've been very stupid.

Yours,
Paul.

 

Welcome to MajorGeeks!

A faint burning smell is never good. You may have let the magic smoke out of something! I would take the 2 100MHz sticks out and leave them out. If that stuff would work, I think it would be a downgrade from 333MHz. Will the computer boot with just your original RAM?

If it does not, unplug the computer and reset the CMOS (should be a jumper near a flat round battery. On some older boards you remove the battery for a while.

If you can't boot, post any beep codes you get when the computer tries to boot.

E

 

Hi E,

Thanks for your help.

I took the 100mhz RAM out straight away so the problem I have is just with trying to start up with the original RAM. I took out the battery for 5 mins but didn't get anywhere. I have a felling that the Bios config is stored in flash memery so maybe that would explain it.

I think I might get further with reseting the CMOS using the jumper. I know that this is really stupid but is that the small rectangular collar that fits over in this case two out of three prongs? Like the kind I am used to on the back of a hard drive to set it to mast, slave, etc?

What should I do with the jumper (assuming that I have identified it accurately)? Should I take the collar part off and restart the machine; just take it off and on again?

I've tried taking the collar part off and restarting the machine but I didn't get anywhere there either: In fact I didn't even get the Bios config screen, or any display for that matter!

In terms of beeps, I was getting just a pattern of single beeps about a second apart when I switch on but now that I've messed about with the jumper there's nothing. Just the whir of the fans and the sound of me banging my head on the desk

Yours,
Paul

 

Hi E,

I tracked down the manual and followed the directions to reset the CMOS. Unfortunately, now I just get a blank screen (no BIOS config, no nothing) and a beep pattern of a single beep about every second.

I think that I might have fried my original memory card when I put the others in. Certainly, when I remove the memory card and restart I get the same blank screen an beeping described above.

I think it might be time to buy some new memory. I just hope everything else is ok. What do you think?

Yours,
Paul.

 

If you check the beep code for you motherboard, you will probably find it is a ram issue - but look it up first, before spending.

 

Hi baklogic,

Unfortunately, there's nothing in the manual about beep codes but according to http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-6216-A7V8XX-problem.html it is a memory problem ("Memory error or Bad memory or bad connection".

<sigh>

It looks like time to check out aria.co.uk for some prices!

Yours,
Paul.:cry

 

At least , by hunting down the beep code, you have confirmed that it is the ram, before spending.
Award bios code page
http://bioscentral.com/beepcodes/awardbeep.htm

 

In fact that link will give anyone links to bios beep codes, for most.

 

Hopefully you have found your problem. Can you borrow some RAM from someone and test it before you spend any money? Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, dang computer games are addictive... I see Backlogic has been on the case.

E