ECC and non-ECC RAM on a non-ECC board.

[grat]

Hello,
I own a ACer Veriton 9100 (10 years old now). It has a s80x mainboard with intel i850 chipset and uses non-ecc ram. Now i had the opportunity to buy 1GB ECC RDRAM (4 RIMMs of Kingston ValueRAM PC800 KVR800X18/256). Plugging in all 4 ECC RIMMs the computer doesn't boot at all. Mixing two of the new ECC-Ram with two of my old non-ECC RAM the computer boots nicely. I have not found any Bios option to "turn on or off" ECC. Handbook says that mainboard needs non-ECC RAM. Why can I use mixed EEC/non-ECC RAM, but not all four banks with ECC? Can I "turn-off" ECC on the ECC modules? If necessary even mechanically (destroying the pins carrying the ECC bits?Thanx in advance. GRAT

 

[o1die]

There may be another issue why you can't mix your new ram with the old. And you never want to mess with the pins on the cpu or the board (for newer sockets). Use what works and sell off the spares, or use them for spares.

 

[grat]

Just the very strange thing is: I CAN MIX old (non-ECC) and new (ECC) ones, but I cannot use only the new ECC modules. However, in articles/threads I always read "you can't mix ECC with non-ECC. With my board it's the other way around.
My suspicion is, that by mixing ECC and non-ECC, the ECC modules "automatically" switch off their ECC capability. But if there is only ECC modules installed, they try to use ECC which does not work with my board.
So my question is: how can i switch off the ECC "by hand"?
Or is this thought toitally wrong? Or are there any other ideas on how I could use the ECC ones?
Thanx in advance.
Grat

 

[o1die]

Most oem boards don't have many bios adjustments. This is by design to prevent the owner from changing a setting that may cause the system not to post. You can go into the advanced settings in the bios, but I doubt you'll find any settings for the ram timings or ecc setting. Your problem isn't uncommon, even for better boards by asus or gigabyte.

 

[Snipergod87]

As o1de said most OEM boards will not allow you to adjust those settings. What you are experiencing is strange. You may be above the RAM limit for your motherboard when you use the new sticks. Which could be the problem.