Only some motherboards can support faster RAM?

Posted by Wesley on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Wesley
Published on 2010-04-28T06:03:29Z Indexed on 2010/04/28 6:14 UTC
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This is a question relating to one of my builds. Here are the specs:

  • ECS P4VXASD2+ V5.0 motherboard
  • Intel P4 Northwood 2.8 GHz (533 MHz FSB, 512 KB L2)
  • 2x 1GB PC3200 DDR RAM
  • Maxtor 300GB IDE HDD
  • 16 MB NVIDIA TNT2 Pro AGP
  • OKIA 300W ATX PSU
  • Gigabyte 52x CD-ROM

The issue right now is that I'm trying to install Windows XP from the CD drive but the computer randomly restarts partway through installation. My other build was BSODing due to RAM latency errors. This ECS board manual states that memory modules "up to 333 MHz" (i.e. PC2700) is supported. However, I am running PC3200 modules, which is clearly faster than PC2700. Would this be causing the computer from randomly restarting?

EDIT 1: I also wanted to mention that my Emachines T2482 is actually running 2x 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM when it should only be supporting PC1600 and PC2100 DDR RAM. Yet there are no issues with it.

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