I went to check the board in question for a friend. System will crash when both memory modules are installed (Corsair 675MHz 4-4-4-12, 2x 1GB), but will work fine with either one of them on their own. The board worked with both sticks till about a month ago. 2.66GHz Intel Pentium D, Radeon x550 PCI-E.
PSU is the typical gutless wonder, but i monitored the 12v line at the ATX 12v connector and although it fluctuates a bit, it never goes under 12.00. His dad had a nice Amprobe DMM which also allowed me to check the ripple of the gutless wonder PSU. I measured 50 to 70 mV at the ATX 12v connector, which is well within specs. No swollen caps in the PSU either.
However there is 20mV of ripple on the CPU Vcore, which doesn't seem right to me... Have to check the Intel specs to be sure. Anyway, with either stick of RAM board passes IntelBurnTest, with both, most of the times it doesn't even finish booting and it BSODs. It is chock full of OST caps, however none of them seem bulged...
I tried a BIOS update. Long story short, THE BOARD IS LABELED WRONG AND ALSO ECS HAS THE WRONG BIOS ON THEIR SITE. I know ECS is crap but i wasn't expecting a goof-up of this magnitude.
The oldest BIOS file on the ECS site for RC410L/800-M2 is for this particular board but has A DIFFERENT ROM ID. Can't remember what it is, but it's another model anyway. The newer ones have the ID RC410L/800-M2, and wouldn't flash. Since it was an official BIOS and it matched the model labeled onto the board i simply set the flasher to ignore the ROM ID, and it flashed.
But the board is now dead. Luckily the BIOS is socketed, and i borrowed another board with the same type of BIOS, and will proceed to hotflashing to bring the ECS back up. But just a heads up, DON'T update ECS BIOSes. Just don't do it. Especially if you get some funky error message when you try to.
So, any suggestion on what could be the cause of the board not working with both sticks of RAM? The board only has two RAM slots, and either stick in either slot works fine on its own. I have some different RAM sticks which i will test with it to see if it's a motherboard or memory compatibility issue, but i suspect the board, since it used to work fine before.
PSU is the typical gutless wonder, but i monitored the 12v line at the ATX 12v connector and although it fluctuates a bit, it never goes under 12.00. His dad had a nice Amprobe DMM which also allowed me to check the ripple of the gutless wonder PSU. I measured 50 to 70 mV at the ATX 12v connector, which is well within specs. No swollen caps in the PSU either.
However there is 20mV of ripple on the CPU Vcore, which doesn't seem right to me... Have to check the Intel specs to be sure. Anyway, with either stick of RAM board passes IntelBurnTest, with both, most of the times it doesn't even finish booting and it BSODs. It is chock full of OST caps, however none of them seem bulged...
I tried a BIOS update. Long story short, THE BOARD IS LABELED WRONG AND ALSO ECS HAS THE WRONG BIOS ON THEIR SITE. I know ECS is crap but i wasn't expecting a goof-up of this magnitude.
The oldest BIOS file on the ECS site for RC410L/800-M2 is for this particular board but has A DIFFERENT ROM ID. Can't remember what it is, but it's another model anyway. The newer ones have the ID RC410L/800-M2, and wouldn't flash. Since it was an official BIOS and it matched the model labeled onto the board i simply set the flasher to ignore the ROM ID, and it flashed.But the board is now dead. Luckily the BIOS is socketed, and i borrowed another board with the same type of BIOS, and will proceed to hotflashing to bring the ECS back up. But just a heads up, DON'T update ECS BIOSes. Just don't do it. Especially if you get some funky error message when you try to.
So, any suggestion on what could be the cause of the board not working with both sticks of RAM? The board only has two RAM slots, and either stick in either slot works fine on its own. I have some different RAM sticks which i will test with it to see if it's a motherboard or memory compatibility issue, but i suspect the board, since it used to work fine before.
They run over 90C, and that's without the thing actually installed in a case! This is a terrific example of how NOT to design a motherboard. If it were mine, i would throw this piece of turd in the garbage right away. It's disastrous. Oh and to top it all, darn thing hangs when booting from USB, and i have no blank CDs left. Brilliant! 
Oh and if anyone of you had any doubt who ECS are... it's good old PCChips. Crappiest mobos ever made. So crappy, that they had to change names to be able to actually sell them again.
There is no way that the onboard video simply takes the bad RAM to itself, because with the PCI card the onboard video still takes up RAM, and the stick still failed. I guess i'll have to try it in my mobo, this is getting silly.
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