RDRAMM Problem

I have a Dell Dimension 8250 that uses RDRAMM. I wanted to upgrade the memory to 1gb from the 515gb that it had. It's damned expensive stuff ($314)at Dell so I found a store that had it on Ebay. It came this weekend and last night my son put it in. There was a faint burning odor and when he took it out he realized it was PC4200 not PC1066. The original RAM no longer works. There were 6 long beeps and a GYGY color code and when I went to chat with Dell they said that the motherboard should be ok. I emailed the guy I got it from and he said that the RAM is the same and has worked for other customers who use the PC1066 and it must be my computer that had something wrong. Does anyone know exactly what happened and who is correct here? My son and I should have checked it out first but installing RAM is such a simple job we thought just put it in. From this article it seems to be different: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/roundupmobo/rambus-pc1066-pc4200-mx.html
I had no problems before, no indication that anything could be wrong, I just wanted to upgrade a little now it's dead.

I would not ordinarily expect a memory module that fits in the proper slot to cause burning odors. An unresponsive machine, beeps, etc, yes, but burning odors and fried boards, no. I would suspect something else is up, but there are too many choices to speculate on the basis of (essentially) zero information.

Usually, I expect memory that has the proper footprint and is at least as fast as that required for the board to be fine. The issue is generally wrong footprint or too slow (assuming there are no "handling" issues).

article it appears that the 4200 Ram is a bit faster, their are pins in the middle of the stick also. My son knows what he is doing, he's been taking apart and building computers for almost 20yrs and he's only 24. He feels it is partially his fault for not pulling out the old ram to check for a match, they look quite different. The 4200 has pins straight across, the 1066 is empty in the middle. Yet the person I bought it from said other customers had no problems.

I'm going out to get a ram tester to see if the new one he sent even works and stopping at a computer shop to show them both and see what they say.

After first making sure of one's ground, that might be a worthwhile thing to do, always sticking to the facts of course.

I called several places and they do not even have my ram available and MAY have it in in a few weeks. It sounds like the motherboard got hit. It isn't worth it to buy a new one and replace this ram, I think I have to go with a new computer at this point.

I do see lots of sellers out on the web now. I see it is a special "package". I have not read that much, but it seems like there are certain requirements in terms of MoBo/Chipset to use it. It might be worthwhile, depending on how you got the MoBo and what your son did, to try to get the MoBo replaced. You might have got a defective one.

Its the motherboard that came with the computer and needs this ram. This series was supposed to be the leading edge for the RDRAMM but it didn't take off and now is in limited supply, therefore expensive. It's over $300 for 512mb at Dell. They don't even have it in stock right now.

Edit: FWIW, I generally avoid "leading edge" stuff, when I can, especially
where two companies are duking it out for technical supremacy. It is always
a time and money sink, and rarely rewarding in any other way.

to that and I would still have only the 512mb of original ram so all it would do is put me back where I was. Just not worth it at this point. I'm thinking of an AMD Athlon 64 dual core and a GB of memory. My son said it may be overkill, I'm not gaming but use streaming quotes/charts all day, flash video and java charts (more than two and it really got bogged down). I'm going out to price some out of the box stuff and see how long it would take for a build today. Any thoughts on direction?

I have an Athlon64 3200+ on an Asus K8N MoBo with .5G memory, and so on, about 1 year old now, and I'm quite happy with it. I also have a 5 yr old Athlon Thurderbird 1.2G (IWill MoBo) which still runs great. I would probably look in the same direction if I was building one today. It sounds like almost anything you could buy today would serve your purposes, and it is a good time to buy, the next month of so, all those Xmas leftovers.