A brand new videocard leads to half my RAM being hardware reserved?

[Coram]

UPDATE: SOLVED. I guess, while installing my new GPU, I somehow caused the ram sticks to become a bit unseated. I don't know how, but all I tried just now was pulling them out completely and reseating them fully. Listened for that lovely click, rebooted, and all is good now.

I hope, if someone else has this problem, they give this solution a try before reinstalling/reformatting anything. I should probably have thought of it first thing.

Hello everyone,

Only recently discovered this when I went to boot a game and I got a message informing me of my RAM situation. Seems that, of my 6GB, only 3GB is currently usable. I've been searching everywhere, but all of the solutions involve mucking about with the BIOS or reformatting the drive, and in every case it was noticed after new RAM was installed.

In my case, the only new piece of hardware I've installed in the last three years was an ASUS DirectCU II Top R9 280X graphics card and a 1TB HDD, with a new Corsair AX850 PSU to run the whole lot. I've not touched the RAM or their positions, and I haven't done anything to the motherboard.

I'm not sure if half of my RAM is missing because it's half, which seems to be the issue everywhere, or because my new video card is supposed to have 3GB of onboard RAM. When I run a DxDiag, Approx. Total Memory under the display section shows as 238MB. It was suggested in another solution thread that dxdiag is full of it, but I can't help but feel like my videocard isn't using its own onboard memory. So far I've gone through msconfig a number of times (maximum memory started as and remains unchecked), I tried refreshing my windows experience index (no change), and I am using Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Before the new videocard was installed, I had all 6GB usable. It's only since installation that it's now being hardware reserved. For the record, my system properties do show "Installed memory (RAM): 6.00 GB (2.99 GB usable)."

Please help. This is aggravating.

EDIT: Catalyst Control Center and GPU-z both say my card has a 3GB memory size. So I don't know what's going on. See attached some system stats.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz, 2801 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Alienware A01, 12/03/2010
SMBIOS Version 2.6
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 6.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 2.99 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.24 GB
Total Virtual Memory 5.98 GB
Available Virtual Memory 2.86 GB
Page File Space 2.99 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

 

[Casper Larsen]

So the only thing you just put into your machine was the GPU?

my initial impression would be that your rams aren't really supported by the MB, but since the MB isn't new, this is not the problem.


there is a guy here who seems to have a similar problem and it was MB related.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1694156/hardware-reserved-ram-8gb.html

What rams are you using and how many?

 

[Coram]

I fixed it! Super super embarrassing on my part. When I was installing the GPU I didn't notice that one of the plates in the back was still in, so when trying to put it in it wouldn't seat properly. When attempting to push it in, I may have bent the MB just a bit too much.

All I did was reseated all my RAM. Full 6GB now. I'm guessing bending the MB a bit was the cause, but I'm not 100% sure. In any case, fixed. Sorry for wasting your guys' time.

@Casper: I'll set your response as the solution just to get that green tag up. Thanks for responding.