Hi all,

I have:

ECS K7S5A mobo
Athlon XP 1700+
256 MB of SDRAM
300W Enermax PSU
Windows XP

The problem is that when I put on another 256 MB mem stick, the system jams every now ant then. Sometimes I can run Windows XP for few hours, sometimes only few minutes.

I have removed the 2-sided tape from the chipset and applied thermal paste and bigger heatsink to it.

Does anybody know what would cause this unstability?

-Jari

Lo,

The K7S5A is a tempremental mobo at the best of times. Using both SDRAM slots is a known problem (not just with this mobo either, other manufacturers even have occasional boards where using certain RAM slots causes problems).

Are you using branded RAM, and are they of the same type?

Best to use the same branded RAM with both slots, and good quality with it. Alternatively buy one RAM card with more capacity. Even better upgrade to DDR, if money permits.

The issues with this board and 2 SDRAM sticks was apparently resolved with one of the BIOS updates.

I would ensure that you have the latest 'official' bios installed, or alternately, you could try one of the overclocking BIOS's which allow for tighter control of some of the timing features.

Thanks for the replies,

The sticks are not manufactured by the same company. The other stick is labelled as so called "green memory" (is this bad?)

Yes, I have the latest official BIOS. Could you please state what overclocking BIOS should I use?

-Jari

You could try any of the later cheepoman BIOS's.

They can be found at: http://www.ocworkbench.com/2002/ecs/k7s5abios/cheepobios.htm

Thanks, but could someone explaing to me what is this "fastwrites" version? How do I know if i need it? I have Radeon 8500LE.

You may notice an improvement in your 3DMarks with this enabled, however, it is likely to cause more problems than it is worth. I would not recommend using it with this board.

Could someone who's using the same mobo and display adapter than me tell me should I use fastwrites version or not?

And what kind of problmes it could produce if I would use the fastwrites?

Are you sure that there is a fastwrites option in the BIOS of the K7S5A?

From memory (blew my CPU the other day, and waiting for the replacement before I can confirm), I don't remember it being an option.

Yes, from cheepoman BIOS (the overclocking bios for k7s5a) there is 2 versions, with fastwrites and without fastwrites.

So what problems could occur if i use fastwrites version??

Jari, if you are having STABILTY problems, why on earth would you want to push your system harder by ratcheting up the BIOS options like fastwrites??? You are already running two dissimilar sticks of memory.....cranking up the BIOS tweaks ISN't going to make things better for you....just the opposite. If anything you should be going back to BIOS defaults until you get your stability where you want it to be and then, ONLY then, tweak one think at a time and see IF your system will tolerate it.

What good is making your system slightly quicker, if it means it's only that much quicker to crash?