New HTPC. DOA Parts?

As the title says, just built a new computer for Media Center purposes (specs at bottom), and I have a really weird issue. When I boot the computer a blue or red matrix like screen appears (picture below). Now all the connections on the board are right, the parts are compatible. I've never run into this issue before, never even heard of it.

Blue Screen
Red Screen

By moving 1 stick of RAM from bank 2, to bank 3, it went away till about half way through the Windows install when I get the red screen. Tried even taking them out of Dual Channel setup and putting them in banks 2 and 3, also tried the rest of the combinations, 1-4, 2-4....ect.

Now my best guess is probably DOA RAM or a mobo with defective memory banks... But knowing me its probably something stupid like and incorrect voltage.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz
ASUS M2A-VM Socket AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Patriot eXtreme Performance 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

 

Looking at your setup, it seems that the ram has been known to be doa/faulty, and the motherboard is a bit choosy with the ram it wants to work with.
Have you tried a Bios update, if it can be done via floppy/cd .

 

Definetly try a BIOS update as baklogic mentioned.

Also, if you can get the computer to post, run memtest and see if you get memory failures. If you dont see any failures, but the computer goes into that matrix display, its probably not DOA RAM, just compatibility issues

 

Well, it took several days to get this post approved (submitted on 21 I think), so I've actually already RMA'd the board.

If I have the same issue, I will definitely try a bios update first, but I've never heard of that error happening before, let alone because of compatibility issues.

One problem I know of is that my memory wants 2.2v, but the board only gives 2.1..

I did a mem test off of my nUbuntu LIVE! CD, and it ran for several hours and didn't find anything... also the entire 1Gb of memory shows up in the POST screen... So I would think everything would work... but so far... bleh.

 

Voltage deficiency for Ram, I would expect this to cause problems.

 

Looking at your Bios updates, there is a fix in version 0202, for ram compatability, and further fixes on later updates.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=M2A-VM&type=map&mapindex=6

 

You can set DDR2 Votage to 2.1 in the Bios, Advanced , ddr2, is set to auto, - changes are possible +1.80 volts to + 2.1v.(In your manual)
Whether this will allow compatability will only show when tested.