I have a few used components which I would like to use to make a system for browsing and emailing and other simple things. I have ecs p6s5at motherboard with socket 370 pentium 3 800 mhz processor pc3200 512+512= 1 GB ram The motherboard has 2+2=4 slots for ram. Two for 168 pin pc133 and other two for 184 pin ddr pc2100 ie 266mhz memory. Only one type of memory can be used at a time. I do not have pc133 or ddr pc2100. All I have is two sticks of pc3200 memory. My question is will pc3200 work ok on this motherboard ? I think that it should scale down itself to pc2100. Am I right ? Is there any risk of burning the memory or motherboard involved if put pc3200 on this board ? According to the manual, the motherboard supports 66mhz, 100mhz, 133 mhz front side bus and an asynchronus HOST/DRAM clock scheme at the combinations of 133/133, 133/200, 133/266, 100/133, 100/200, 100/266, 66/66, 66/100 and 66/200.

it'll work. its backward compatible

The pc3200 spec itself is backwards compatible with PC2100, but that's only one of several requirements that determine whether a particular ram module will work in your mboard - it has to be compatible with the mboard and it's chipset. See response 5 in this for some info about ram compatibilty, and some places where you can find out what will work in your mboard for sure: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... Correction to that: Mushkin www.mushkin.com. The problem with ram rated higher than the mboard supports is there is nowhere to look up whether it will work in your mboard - compatible modules are only listed up to the max the mboard supports. If you already have it you might as well try it - it won't hurt anything to try it. If it works properly it will run at the fastest PCxxxx spec the mboard supports, as long as no other module is slower. If it doesn't you'll have to get something else, and you might as well look up something compatible to get. If it works, you can check whether it is 100% compatible with your mboard by running a ram check, but do this first to make sure the test isn't detecting a poor ram contact problem: See response 2 in this - Clean the contacts on the ram modules, and make sure the modules are properly seated: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w...