Which is the culprit: Motherboard or Ram

[michio]

Here are my specs:

Amd Athlon 5000+ running at 2.6 with Scythe Katana II
Asus M3A78 Pro Am2+ motherboard
G.Skill 2x2gb ddr2-1000 cl5-5-5-15 running at 2.0v
80gb Ide hdd (I know I really need to upgrade this)
Lg Sata dvd burner
Windows vista ultimate sp1
Sparkle 400w psu
Antec 300 case

1 of the 2 sticks of ram will not post, since I just bought it less then a month ago I was planning on RMAing it but I decided to try the sticks of ram at my friends house on his old HP computer and it works perfectly fine. Odd, I asked to borrow his 2 sticks of ram (Samsung brand) to test out on my setup and they worked perfectly fine on each slot. I have tried manually setting the timings and ram voltage, it temporarily worked until I shutdown the computer for the night and rebooted it wouldn't post anymore. When the ram was working on my computer I ran memtest on the sticks and it detected no errors. I am going to ship my sticks of ram either later tomorrow or Tuesday afternoon since I ran out of ideas of what could be wrong. I bought the sticks of ram at NCIX and I checked the reviews for whome bought it and so far no one seems to have gotten a dud. I must either be very unlucky or something else is behind my ordeal.

[Linux_Box]

"I have tried manually setting the timings and ram voltage"

I've read a few places where some MB won't work with memory set above 800mhz by SPD when using auto. Did you set the memory manually to 1000 (or whatever it needs to be) and save the config? That's the one guess... Maybe set mem voltage to a little higher at the same time? (errr, maybe really loose settings on the ram just to see if you can get it to boot?)

[Ket]

Update your mobo BIOS to the latest available. If that doesn't help any.. I would probably send the board and the RAM back to where you bought them from.

[michio]

Thanks for the replies.. I have tried setting the mhz manually and auto and it had no effect, I also updated to the latest bios but that had no effect. I just noticed that this topic: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=215761 is very similar to the problem I have, I have sent my sticks to be rmaed hopefully that solves the problem and I won't have to rma my motherboard as well.

[STEvil]

tried bumping the ram volts a bit?