The Path to Zen

Kington and Corsair don’t live happily together

In light of the recent RAM price drop, I have decided to give my “meager” 1GB RAM a boost. So I went to NewEgg, ordered the Corsair 2×512MB PC3200 w/ free shipping. The next day (yes, did I mention NewEgg+FedEx rocks!) the two lovely sticks were on my desk, ready for a supposedly straightforward installation.

Alas, exception it wasn’t straightforward. I plugged them into my Asus P4S800D-E, with the pair of 512MB Kingston ValueRAM sticks that were already there. Power up…

Overclocking has failed! Press F1 to Setup or F2 to load the default.

Overclocking? What overclocking? The motherboard is 800MHz. Both pairs of RAM’s are PC3200, i.e., should run at 400MHz. I entered BIOS Setup, changed RAM clock from “auto” to “333MHz”. Reboot, now everything works fine.

But it’s not fine. I should be running Fedora over VMWare over Windows XP with 1 full GB right now!

Today I did some more testing. If I only plug in either pair, they both run perfectly at 400MHz. They just don’t get along. Now, the question is do I get another pair of Corsair to replace the Kingston? or do I RMA this pair and get a pair of Kingston?

[edit - 04/29] I found out the reason the two pairs weren’t working together was - the Kingston, while being also PC3200, is CAS 3, yet the Corsair is CAS 2.5 - simple, isn’t it? Well, I ended up getting another pair of Corsair to stay up my original plan, and will probably move the Kingston to another rig.