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In which Mr Flops learns that it is indeed a good idea to RTFM 
In the first machine in my sig I have two 1Gb sticks of OCZ PC6400 memory.
OCUK advertised the same deal at a reduced price and I could not resist, so ordered another two sticks.
This is the one, £62.26 when on offer.
So I was looking forward to having 4Gb RAM on my gaming rig...
However, when I opened up the case, I noticed the cooling pipes on my Zalman CPU cooler overhang the 4th memory slot - foiled
(see pic below) I couldn't turn the cooler around as then the pipes would foul the onboard chipset cooling.
I toyed with the idea of getting a different cooler but then thought I'd put all 4 OCZ RAM sticks into the second machine in my sig and maybe switch motherboards at a later date.
So I took the Corsair Memory (2Gb) out of machine # 2 and put all 4 OCZ sticks in there. The 2Gb of Corsair PC6400 is now in my main rig.
Only problem was, only 3Gb showed, both in Bios and in Win XP.
I updated the P5B Bios from 1101 to 1206 and it didn't make any difference.
I went into Bios and changed a setting in Northbridge config to memory remap enabled. That made 4Gb show up in the Bios but only 2Gb show up in Windows
So I changed that feature back to disabled.
Flummoxed, I decided to consult the motherboard manual and read this:
In other words if you're using XP 32 bit, you can't use more than 3Gb system memory on the Asus M2N-Sli Deluxe motherboard. And when I checked the manual for my Asus P5B deluxe, it said exactly the same thing.
So you see, it really does pay to consult the oracle or in more common parlance - RTFM
I do have a third machine, earmarked for use as a media Centre and built around an Asus M2V motherboard. That has a Gig (2 x 512Mb) DDR2 RAM in there but it's a different CAS and frequency setting so won't work alongside the OCZ RAM.
I'm going to put the 2Gb of OCZ RAM into the 3rd machine which is overkill really as it's main use will be for music playback and playing movies. However, I expect I will play a few games on it so it will probably come in handy eventually.
Bloody annoying though
I did consider changing to a motherboard that can handle 4 x 1Gb RAM sticks or even 'upgrading' to XP 64 Bit or maybe even Vista 64 Bit but I thought no - enough is enough.
So there ya go folks, read those manuals, they're supplied for a good reason
Here's the pic, not very good quality, taken with a Canon Ixus i5, I got a little too close, but you can see how the heat pipes overhang the memory slot.
In the first machine in my sig I have two 1Gb sticks of OCZ PC6400 memory.
OCUK advertised the same deal at a reduced price and I could not resist, so ordered another two sticks.
This is the one, £62.26 when on offer.
So I was looking forward to having 4Gb RAM on my gaming rig...
However, when I opened up the case, I noticed the cooling pipes on my Zalman CPU cooler overhang the 4th memory slot - foiled
(see pic below) I couldn't turn the cooler around as then the pipes would foul the onboard chipset cooling.I toyed with the idea of getting a different cooler but then thought I'd put all 4 OCZ RAM sticks into the second machine in my sig and maybe switch motherboards at a later date.
So I took the Corsair Memory (2Gb) out of machine # 2 and put all 4 OCZ sticks in there. The 2Gb of Corsair PC6400 is now in my main rig.
Only problem was, only 3Gb showed, both in Bios and in Win XP.
I updated the P5B Bios from 1101 to 1206 and it didn't make any difference.
I went into Bios and changed a setting in Northbridge config to memory remap enabled. That made 4Gb show up in the Bios but only 2Gb show up in Windows
So I changed that feature back to disabled.
Flummoxed, I decided to consult the motherboard manual and read this:
In other words if you're using XP 32 bit, you can't use more than 3Gb system memory on the Asus M2N-Sli Deluxe motherboard. And when I checked the manual for my Asus P5B deluxe, it said exactly the same thing.
So you see, it really does pay to consult the oracle or in more common parlance - RTFM
I do have a third machine, earmarked for use as a media Centre and built around an Asus M2V motherboard. That has a Gig (2 x 512Mb) DDR2 RAM in there but it's a different CAS and frequency setting so won't work alongside the OCZ RAM.
I'm going to put the 2Gb of OCZ RAM into the 3rd machine which is overkill really as it's main use will be for music playback and playing movies. However, I expect I will play a few games on it so it will probably come in handy eventually.
Bloody annoying though
I did consider changing to a motherboard that can handle 4 x 1Gb RAM sticks or even 'upgrading' to XP 64 Bit or maybe even Vista 64 Bit but I thought no - enough is enough.
So there ya go folks, read those manuals, they're supplied for a good reason
Here's the pic, not very good quality, taken with a Canon Ixus i5, I got a little too close, but you can see how the heat pipes overhang the memory slot.
