Hey all,

I have an ASUS k8n motherboard, and I recently bought a 1 gig low density PC3200 DDR stick of ram. I put it in, booted up the computer and it said I still had 1 gig rather then 2 gigs like I should. I did some lookin around on websites and found that some people have had their ram recognized right away, some found that you need 2 of the same sticks for them to properly work (which cant be the case since my motherboard has 3 slots) and some other people have had to reset the "Jumpers" in CMOS so that it can recognize the new ram? I'm assuming this is me…but I have no experience with CMOS and I dont wan't to mess my computer up, any suggestions here? Or has anyone had to do this and maybe could give me a hand so I don't mess it up? :) Any help is much appreciated

thank you in advance all!

OK this is probably rather due to your ram timings your 1 gig ram stick probably has different ram timing which is what you must first find out its usually on the packet that you take it out from, then go to your bios and your chipset settings and then go to northbridge and then there should be a memory selection option and from there you can change you memory timings of your prefered stick so yeh give a try and hopefully it should work. Oh and you can easily reset your cmos by moving the jumper from 1st pin and second pin(its default location) to 2nd and 3rd pins (make sure your comp is turned off for this step)then wait 20 to 30 seconds and return to default position heres is a more clear layout of instructions.

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Locate, if possible, the instruction booklet for your motherboard.You may also want to closely examine the motherboard itself.

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Shut down your computer and disconnect the power plug.

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Now identify where the jumpers are located, then check the present pin location and the location of the jumper on those pins to determine their default location. As an example, the default location on the above motherboard is to have the jumper across pins #1 and #2. Write it down!

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Next, move the jumpers from the their default location (Example: from across pins #1 and #2 as above) and then place the jumper across pins #2 and #3.

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Leave the jumper in place for 20 to 30 seconds and then return it to its default location.

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Now plug the power cord back in and restart the computer.

and then set your settings back up. also like it said before get your motherbaord booklet out as that should have all the information on where everything is located anyway hope this is of any help.

Well i havn't bothered to have a look at your motherboard in detail.. well at all :right: buuut, its quite possible you dont have to play around with the jumper.

Have a look for the CMOS battery (little silver thing, looks like a supersized watch battery). If you got one;

1. Turn off computer
2. Unplug
3. Ground yourself (touch a piece of unpainted metal from your case to discharge static)
4. Remove CMOS battery and wait a couple minutes
5. Put it back in

This should hopefully reset your BIOS.

If still only 1GB, quite possible you got a borked stick (like i did about a month ago) or something doesnt like something else and doesn't want to play together.

Well you could always modify the memory timings for your memory sticks in bios, since if the 1gig memory stick is different it will probably have different memory timings so usually correcting that should solve the problem, if that doesn't work reset cmos (as stated before) and then if that doesn't work the ram stick is probably a defect or just really doesn't like your other ram and therefore incompatible;).

(forgot to mention checking your bus speeds are the same) as darksun said

Its better to buy memory sticks of the same memory times(latency times) as well as the same brand of memory stick, size of memory stick eg 1gig, 512mb is unimportant unless you intend to run you ram in dual channel in which case it is very important that the ram sticks have the same size and are of the same brand(usually the come in dual kit which solves the problem of possible incompatibility) since otherwise they wont be able to run in dual channel.

just try to synchronize the bus speeds, at which the RAM slots oprate.they should be the same. change it in the BIOS settings,dont reset it,you might not be able to boot it,and as you said yourself,have no expierience with motherboard settings. :happy: try to find the busspeed of slot one,then find the one for slot2. modify that one,to match the first slot's busspeed.

Some boards wont use new RAM instantly, try disabling quickboot in the BIOS, quickboot skips the RAM check, amongst other things during POST, some boards wont use new RAM until it finds this when doing cheeks. Perhaps this is an old thing i don't know, just something i picked up but it might work.