I just installed a new motherboard, MSI K9N Neo V3 with an Athlon X2 4400+. I bought a 2GB stick of RAM , with the intention of ordering 3 more when I have the extra money, for a total of 8GB. The problem is, in the manual for this board, it said that the maximum RAM is 4GB. So is there a chance it will work with more than 4?
The manufacturers manual is a snapshot in time, it only reflects what the manufacturer tested, when the manual was being written. They are rarely updated, unless a new version of the computer / motherboard / etc comes out.
Let’s take the confusion out of the issue. What does Crucial or Kingston say about the memory capacity of the computer? You know, the people that manufacturer and sell memory for a living…Kingston & Crucial are willing to test with newer memory chipsets, etc. So if they say your model will accept more, then it should work.
I couldn’t find the board on Crucial, but Kingston states:
Standard Memory: 0 MB (Removable)
Maximum Memory: 8 GB
Expansion: 4 Sockets
CPU & ChipSet: AMD Athlon 64 (AM2) Nvidia nForce 560 AMD Athlon 64 X2 (AM2) Nvidia nForce 560 AMD Sempron (AM2) Nvidia nForce 560
Bus Architecture: PCI; PCI Express; USB
Mfgr’s System P/N’s: N/A
Comments MODULES MUST BE ORDERED AND INSTALLED IN PAIRS for Dual Channel mode. Kingston offers “K2” Kit part numbers for Dual Channel mode. Â If 4GB is installed, the recognized memory may be reduced to 3.5GB or less (depending on system configuration and memory allocation).
Maximum configurations require 64-bit operating system. Â AMD Sempron processors support DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 memory only. DDR2-800 modules are not supported with this processor.
At 1066MHz, this system supports up to two single rank modules ONLY. DDR2-1066 is supported by AM2+ CPUs only.