I had a friend buy some ram to upgrade his comp and his origanal ram was a pc3200 400mghz and it was a 512. so he bought another 512 this time being a pc5300 ddr2 400/500/etc. so he boot his comp and what do ya know but nothing. so I checked it out and found out the the middle peice on the ram was like 1/16 of an inch off which means he forced it in there. So now without it it still is blank with no signal to the moniter and no beeps. just a blinking moniter with what appears to be a running computer only it doesnt sound like it is doing anything except staying on. So I guess my question is, is the computer hurt or just maybe it fried the other ram in the other slot so now the comp thinks it has no ram? this is an emergency so please reply as soon as possible!

He must have given it some force to make it "fit".

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It would seem that if you had to forse feed the ram into the socket it may be turned the wrong way, how about try one at a time and swap each socket from the other and go from there ?

Keep the old stuff running

Thank you but, Know we already did the comparison and I am sure it only partial latched in. So I think it was turned on with one and a half sticks.

So I guess I am also asking is would it fry my motherboard?

I am going to be of little help as I have never had half a stick of ram come to life, let us know how it turns out.

Keep the old stuff running

Let me clarify my question. Would it ruin my computer to have the wrong ram in it!

No offence I am in a hurry to get this figured out!~

Then do this, find the first chip you had and put in slot 1 and try a boot from there, you may have damged the MOBO but I doubt it at this point, also try and boot first without ram installed and see if you get any BEEPS from the machine, if you do I would guess that the MOBO is ok for now, try the above and post back

Keep the old stuff running

well at one time I got a continues beep that was never ending. examp. beeeep beeeeep beeeeep beeeeeep about every other sec!

All ready it sounds like you may have a problem, do this reseat all the cards and try and reboot without the ram, what happens ?

Keep the old stuff running

no sound infact it doesnt try to boot, it just turns on and that it.

You have tried the known good stick in slot 1
and it is there when you try and boot, is that when you get the beeps, if so try the second stick in slot 1 again and post back....

Keep the old stuff running

Examine the slot the stick was in. Make sure none of the contacts are shorting.

If you put it all back together exactly as it was before the ill-fitting stick was added then you should probably try a known working compatible stick that hasn't been in the PC. If it still doesn't work then yes, it will (and did) ruin the computer by forcing that stick in.

... don't you mean 'forsing'?

So much for 'foolproof' design - some fools are more determined than others

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Good way of damaging your DDR slot. By forcing that DDR to into a DDR slot he could have damaged the slot itself.

Rule #1 never force pc hardware in a slot. If it doesn't fit then there is a reason.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

into DDR2 slot*

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

i beleive the motherboard could well be damaged because either the terminals/connectors in the slot are now bent and shorting eachother,
OR
the terminals/connections were bridged by the contacts on the wrong ram stick and shorted the ram slot whilst the wrong ram stick was in there

It would help if you listed detailed specs on his system.

It sounds to me like his PC uses DRR1 RAM, as in PC3200...but he bought DDR2 RAM, as in PC2-5300. That would explain why the notch in the bottom of the RAM was in the wrong place. It wasn't installed backwards in the slot, the RAM he bought is incompatible with the system & should not have been used in the 1st place.

If the system no longer boots with the correct 512MB stick of RAM anymore & since you're no longer getting any beeps, it's very possible that you fried the board. It's also possible that you fried both sticks of RAM (old & new). And depending on what CPU he has, he may have fried that as well. Athlon64's have the memory controller built into the CPU...I don't know how that controller would hold up with the wrong type of RAM being used.

You have a lot of troubleshooting to do....

Hell lets face it you miles well replace the board.

Next time tell your friend reading never hurts.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

AS long as nothing broke off just get the right ram and it should work - if not use the spare slots. Yes you might be able to angle in the ddr2 but it should not damage anything as long as nothing broke.

ram slot is just little spring clips if any look bent look closely with a light then bend them back with a pin or tiny screw driver.

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