Hello,
Can some1 help me?

My motherboard is an old Gigabyte model no: GA-6VXE7+. It was running fine with 64 meg PC100 ram (generic brand). But with today's applications, 64 is not enough, so I bought a 128 meg Kingston Tech. RAM stick PC133 (shouldn't cause a problem mixing up PC100 & PC133, because the PC133 will just run at the pace of the 64 meg stick). I inserted the 128 megs on slot 0, the 64 megs on slot 1. When I turned on the power, the power supply blew some smoke can be seenm, and fried my harddisk (snif snif) along with it (curiously, only these two components were damaged, the cpu, vid cards, motherboard work fine). I've replaced the power supply with a Omnilink 300W and inserted back the 64 megs ram stick and now it works fine.

Before attempting to insert back the 128 stick, I'd like to know the reason why this happened.

That's bad. Are you sure those were the only components that were damaged? PC133 does go to a lower speed. BUT, it's not always like that. Some PCs will REQUIRE the exact memory type. I used to think that it would always go down to 100 if a PC133 was put in. I read somewhere that this is not true.

So either try it out again first, or get the exact memory type. This is usually recommended anyway. I have an old pc (originally 32MB or ram, now 224MB) that I bought the same ram for, and it has no problems. The cause for your machine to blow like that 'could' be due to the wrong type of memory. Of course, there may be many other reasons for it, but this is one possibility.

Kevin.

Yep, I'm pretty sure that only those 2 components were damaged weird eh? Should I remove the 64 megs stick and only insert the 128 megs stick to try things out? My friends suggested to unplug the maximum of accessories connected to the pc such as HDD, cd drive, sound card, & modem & just leave the floppy drive & the minimum essential when testing.

"Should I remove the 64 megs stick and only insert the 128 megs stick to try things out?"

NO.

I am not sure how a stick of ram could have blown the power supply. But just in case, I would recommend NOT using that stick (or that type of ram again).

Check the mb's supported ram type again and only buy what's recommended. As already stated, do not mix different ram modules on your mb.

well i don't see how a stick of ram could of done that, if you were to ask me i would say it is something to do with your mobo and a short in that dimm, sounds to me like your hd was drawing too much current and fried itself and the psu. however like everyone says, better safe then sorry, don't mix, (even though i do at work, after all it is work, not my equip) but like i said don't rule other things out, it is HIGHLY unlikely that the ram directly caused this, sorry bud

I don't understand either your problem.
Usually when two different RAM modules which aren't compatible with each other, the worse thing that is going to happen is the motherboard not booting up, unless there is some physically damage on the 128 meg stick that caused a electrical shortage, thus frying some components.

A 300 W PSU should be able to handle without breaking any sweat the mobo, the CPU, a CDROM, a CDRW, a videocard, a soundcard, a modem and a single 7200 RPM harddrive.

My old computer has a 300 W PSU, powering 3 HDDs at the same time without even breaking a sweat.

Hong, your RAM blowing up your other components still remain a mystery to me.

the only time I have seen a similar problem to this was some years ago when the power connectors to the motherboard were removed (they got in the way of fitting a chip) and were accidentally put back reversed.

Most of the time this can't happen as there are guiderails on the back of the connectors and the mobo but in this particular case it was a really cheap mobo and the guiderails were missing.

The result was a loud bang and smoke, the MOBO was fried, so was the PSU.

It seems really weird that something can put so much juice across your PC that the HD and PSU are fried yet the mobo is fine.

Only thing I can think of is an electrical short in the cable that runs from the PSU to your HD, that could have been triggered when you moved the cables to fit the ram but should have been fixed when you fitted a new PSU.

Only thing to be careful with is if you were using a power extender to give you more power connections and had it connected to the HD, if you were then I'd change it as that may be where the short occurred).

Either way, it should be nothing to do with the RAM, even if there was faulty wiring on the RAM socket that could lead to anything like this you'd still have blown the mobo.