Ram works two at a time but not all four together

[wretchedone]

I bought new ram for my computer and it won't start up when all four new sticks are in. I can put two sticks at a time and it works fine. All of them function fine when not together and all of the slots are functioning fine. We've switched them up every which way in the slots. Like I said, two will run fine. Four causes the system to not move past the initial loading page and three sticks cause the computer to make a loud constant beep and not even turn on. I have very little computer knowledge. My boyfriend and I have both read tons of stuff but nothing seems to be working. I have not updated bios, which has been suggested in a lot of the posts, because I haven't the slightest clue how to go about doing so. I have read about it a lot and from what people are saying, it is not something you should attempt if you do not know what you are doing. Any suggestions?

My terribly old computer is a Dell OptiPlex GX620, Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz, I'm not sure what other info is needed..

The ram that I bought was Elpida 8GB(4x2GB) PC-5300 DDR2-667Mhz non-ECC Unbuffered 240-Pin, desktop

I used crucial to get the ram info, copied and pasted into ebay to actually buy it. All of the specs and such on the ones bought were the same as the items that crucial recommended me upgrade my ram to.

 

[byza]

My guess would be that you bought RAM that has different timings to your original RAM. Since it's unlikely that you need more that 8gb of RAM, i'd just use the new sticks on their own as the simplest solution.

 

[wretchedone]

My guess would be that you bought RAM that has different timings to your original RAM. Since it's unlikely that you need more that 8gb of RAM, i'd just use the new sticks on their own as the simplest solution.

That is what I tried to do but when I put all four of the new ones in, my computer does not start up past the "starting windows" screen. It won't start with two old mixed with two new either. It will only work if I use two new sticks alone and leave the other two slots empty.

 

[byza]

Looking into it, it seems like the max supported memory is 4gb.

 

[wretchedone]

Bysa, I'm assuming you're right. I can't figure anything else out either. I thought 64-bit systems held more but this is an old computer so I'm going to leave it well enough alone. At least she still runs. Thanks for your time and help!

 

[byza]

Usually it is, I just saw on the Dell website that it said max 4gb and since you can only buy 1 and 2gb supported modules it seems to me that it must be max 4gb supported.