Ram question

Hello all. I am currently building my first system and I tried firing it up for the first time the other day, and I am getting no video. Im pretty sure I know what the problem is, but I wanted to get an experts opinion.

Components

Case - Rosewill Challenger
PSU - Rosewill 1000w
CPU - Intel i7 970 hex core
MB - Asus P6X58-E WS
Cooler - Antec Khuler H20 620

Basically, I hit the power button and all my fans spin up along with the cooler pump but I get no video.

The motherboard I am using supports up to 24 gb of ram and has six slots, meaning a maximum of 6x4 gb. Well I bought a stick of Corsair Vengeance 8 gb by mistake, thinking it was going to be 2x4 gb instead of 1x8gb. So my question is, could using an 8 gb stick in a 4 gb max slot be causing my boot issues? If I take the stick out and try to boot with no ram at all, I get a long short short beep, which means a memory issue. If I try to boot with the 8 gb in slot 1, I get no beeps. There was a little diagnosing board that was included with my MB, and when I try to boot, it flashes the same three codes over and over.

Anyway, any help is appreciated. If any more info is needed, just let me know. Thanks!

Hello Dleslie and welcome to the forums,

I have only so far looked at your motherboard choice and the cpu. You have no graphics card listed; assuming you are not using a graphics card, then that is the reason you have no video. The cpu does not have embedded graphics as part of the Intel cpu chip. Motherboard does not have graphics.

As far as the RAM goes, your max RAM is 24 gig for six slots. You have to install either the three blue slots or the three black slots or all six slots. You can use either 4 gig sticks or 2 gig sticks but do not mix them. You must install a minimum of 3 sticks of 4 gig or three sticks of 2 gig. OR you install 6 sticks of 4 gig or 6 sticks of 2 gig. 2 gig really does not make a lot of sense other than cost.

Putting in six sticks on a new first time build may not be a good idea if you accidentally 'damage' one due to static or some other reason. You are probably best off to use 3 sticks of 4 gig, get it working and then add in 3 new sticks of 4 gig, but using the same model # and same mfg as used on the first 3 sticks.
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Comment # 1: Your motherboard supports according to the spec sheet the following Intel cpu: Intel® Socket 1366 Core™ i7 Processor Extreme Edition/Core™ i7 Processor/ . The spec is not clear as to whether the cpu you have picked out is supported, but ASUS USA can tell you this.

Comment # 2: The cpu and the motherboard are 'old' 2010 products. Are these items you just purchased or have you had them a long time or What? I am not being critical, just commenting. On this forum we normally are dealing with 'current' Intel cpus such as Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and now Haswell ( I guess).

If you can please provide some feedback on my Comments # 1 and # 2 above. Thanks !

I will be looking at the psu and case tomorrow. Need some comment on what graphics card you are using (I assume you left it out of your list).

Thanks for the reply. As far as the older hardware, I just didnt do any research I guess. I pretty much jumped on newegg and picked up stuff I thought would match. Bad idea, apparently. But to answer the question, most of the parts ive had for about a year before my build got sidelined for awhile, and now im trying to finish it up.

The gpu is much older, its from a pc ive had sitting around the houze for awhile. I was just using it as a placeholder untill I figured out which direction I wanted to go graphics wise. It is a GeForce 8800 GTX. I5 has been sitting in a box for a few months but worked pretty good before that.

As for the cpu, I hope its supported by my board. I just assumed that if the socket was the same, it would work. Ill call Asus tomorrow and see if they can clarify.

My main question though, is if I use a single stick of 8 gig ram on a motherboard that has 4 gig max slots, will that keep it from booting? Or will it just detect the 8 gig stick as 4 gigs instead?

Thanks again for taking the time to help.

Bump

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dleslie212

My main question though, is if I use a single stick of 8 gig ram on a motherboard that has 4 gig max slots, will that keep it from booting? Or will it just detect the 8 gig stick as 4 gigs instead?

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The 8gb ram stick is not compatible. Find some triple channel ram and put it in the proper 3 slots like the manual (and zburns) says. That's the first place to start trouble-shooting.

Thanks for the clairification