Problems with new motherboard.

I just got a new motherboard for one of my computers from ebay; a PC Chips M871G. It's cheap and low-end, but that's all I needed.

Lots of problems though. First it was hanging while checking the RAM, and other times while checking IDE drives, although it didn't go on long enough for me to see a pattern; I moved the RAM to the other slot and no more hanging.

Great, but then entering the BIOS to change settings, seconds (10-15) later it would freeze, with vertical striping in the video. The amount of time it took this to happen changed each time I tried. Sometimes longer, sometime it would happen as soon as I turned it on. This is onboard video btw, so I'm thinking a chipset problem or something could cause this?

I tried booting the mobo resting on some cardboard, but same deal.

Is it safe enough for me to claim DOA on this thing?

There's nothing else attached, other than RAM (1GB, no-name cheap stuff), and the CPU (Athlon64 2800+).

Check with another RAM..i remember this problem a friend of mine had..he couldnt install an OS and we thought that it was a problem with the HDD, but we just replaced one RAM and it works like a charm now..some problems are really intriguing :P

Another thing that maybe causing it is the power supply, but sounds like it may not be the case if you are running near barebones.

I tried a 256MB stick out of my other PC, and it solved the problem. I had no idea bad RAM could cause the system to do stuff like that. Although I do remember now reading somewhere (which I can't find now) that there are problems with this mobos chipset and using 1GB RAM sticks @ 400Mhz or something. I tried my 1GB that was causing the problems again, with the DRAM speed set to 333Mhz, and it seems to work fine now. Weird.

Anyway, thanks!