I have an ASUS A7N8X-E Motherboard. The manual says it comes with 4 DDR memory sockets, however,the diagram in the manual only shows 3. There are only three memory sockets on the board. Strange. I purchased 3 identical 1gb of ram because the manual says it will take 3. I installed 2 of the 1gb of ram in the first two slots and all works fine. When I put in the third 1gb in the third slot, the computer won't load windows. It starts, then freezes. I ran the test on the memory and it said it was fine. I am assuming the memory must be added in pairs. Someone said I could turn off the dual memory in the bios and I would be able to use all 3 gigs of memory. By doing this, what will I be giving up? I am not sure what the benefits are of having DDR. Will the computer run just as fast? Right now I have the 2gb and speed booster. Should I just leave it as is since it is working with 2gbs? Thanks!

Your motherboard only uses 3 slots, not four. I don't know what you paid for the DDR RAM, but I would forget about the third stick and just run 2 GB in dual channel mode. I don't think it's worth putting much money into a fairly outdated system.

I Had asus a7v8x (which i know is not the same as it has via chipset instead of nforce). that had three slots. i bought this when it was first on market and manual says if using pc2100(266) ram you can use all three slots, if using pc2700(333) you can only use two slots and if using pc3200(400) you can only use one slot. it does not say why. but i wonder if yours has some kind of restriction like this. I only ever used 2 x pc2700 in it so dont know what would happen if used more.(and i cant try it now as the mobo failed when it was about three years old)

Two GB of memory is more than enough for 'most' users.

I still have my A7N8X-X, it's a great board. The -X is single channel, the other varieties of the A7N8X are dual channel. But dual channel is of little or no benefit to the socket A platform, so it's really not an issue. If you can get all 3 sticks of RAM to run, by all means do it. According to the manual, 3 sticks will still run in dual channel mode...see page 2-9. You didn't list which CPU you have, but if you want optimal performance, change the Memory Frequency setting in the BIOS from AUTO (or "By SPD") to 100% (or Sync), then you'll always maintain a 1:1 ratio. "And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

Thanks! I went in to the bios, and cannot see where to change the memory frequency like you suggested. When I look at the manual, it does show that it will run with the 3gs of ram. I am wondering if this could be a Vista issue? However, a friend updated his yesterday to the 3 sticks and had no problem and he runs Vista. It is strange that the computer starts right up, starts to load windows, then just freezes. Once I take the 3rd stick out, it works fine. Figures. :)

"I went in to the bios, and cannot see where to change the memory frequency like you suggested" You must not have looked very hard. It's under ADVANCED / Advanced Chipset features. Here's some settings to try but since you didn't bother to tell us which CPU you have, I had to leave CPU freq settings with question marks: CPU Ext Freq = ??? MHz CPU Freq Multiple Setting = AUTO System Performance = USER DEFINED CPU Interface = Optimal Memory Freq = 100% or By SPD Memory Timing = Optimal (or set manually to 2.5-3-3-11) FSB Spread Spectrum = disabled AGP Spread Spectrum = disabled CPU Vcore Setting = Menu CPU Vcore = AUTO Graphics Aperture Size = 128MB AGP Freq = 66 "And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"