Geil Golden Dragon Question

Ok it's been a while since I have posted so I will say hello to everyone. Now to the point, I bought a 512MB stick of Geil Golden Dragon DDR 400 for my wifes computer. Which is an AMD64 3000+ socket 754 w/Coolermaster Aquagate mini R120, MSI K8N Neo Platinum Nforce3 board, Maxtor 200GB IDE HDD, running Win XP SP2 and all updates. The problem is when I put the Dragon in the computer starts but wont post or boot. It just keeps on beeping. I tried in different slots but no difference. So I figured it is defective.
Now I put it in another computer that consists of an AMD Semperon 2500+ socket A, on an ECS KT600-A board with a 60GB IDE Maxtor, running Win XP PRO. When I fired this computer up it booted just fine, loaded Windows, but then it kept looking for the home network to log onto, and when I went to restart it would only let me click standby. So I clicked standby and brought it back and restarted it. When it came back up it ran fine except when I look at the system info it shows a 256 stick. When I check it in CPU-Z it states 512 the way it is supposed to. So this is where I am at now. I bought the stick on Ebay. I already contacted Geil and the seller. The seller ststed that he would send me the one in his rig now or refund my money if Geil does not help me. After some digging and searching I honestly believe that I need to adjust the BIOS settings on the MSI for the Dragon to work. I saw alot of people had to bump the voltage to 2.8 to get their ram to boot. This is why I am here to see if anyone has any advice on this. Sorry it is long but I wanted to state all the facts. Thank you in advance for any help or advice on this situation. Jesse

It seeems that those RAM needs 2.80 to 2.85V to run really stable.
You may also have to experiment with the timings.

Use Memtest, to check if they are stable at the timings you try.

Ok I will give the voltage a try and see what happens. Thank you for the reply.

I tried to up the voltage to 2.8 but still would not boot. Then I tried 2.7 and no go. So I am not sure what to do. I have another 256MB stick coming, and now I am not sure if I can even use it. Well thanks for the reply and if you have anymore advice please feel free to send it my way. Jesse

The timigs for Geil G.D. Is CAS 2 6-3-3 1T. Maybe you should try a looser timing?

Sorry for the late reply. My stick says CL=2.5-8-4-4. I am sot sure if this is tight or not. If you could give me any advice on what numbers I should use please feel free to do so. All your help has been greatly appreciated. Thank you, Jesse

Hi again! I read up on the Geil G.D. And those timings you meansion, are actually the best for that RAM.

But what worries me is, that looking at various discussions on the net. The Geil Golden Dragon, are a quite difficult RAM model to get to work properly. So maybe, you should return them if you can? And get a couple of Corsair or Kingston RAM instead. Those are reliable RAM, with almost zero compability problems.

Here are some suggestions:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145440

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145450


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820141437

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820144114

Well it looks like I will be returning the memory to the seller. I got my 256MB stick of Golden Dragon and needless to say it works perfectly! It's running right now with no problems. I still dont know why the bad stick would boot on the ECS board and not the MSI board. That remains a mystery. Thank you for your help goranpaa it is very much appreciated. Take care, Jesse

You're welcome. But you did most of the work yourself.