I bought extra RAM for my motherboard and it appears that putting any of the sticks in slots 3 & 4 (2 furthest from CPU) will prevent me from reaching BIOS.
the two sticks i already had installed were
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 8GB 3000Mhz
The new sticks are
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 8GB 3200Mhz
MY SPECS
specs:
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Version 10.0.17763 Build 17763
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name PR3D4T0R
System Manufacturer System manufacturer
System Model System Product Name
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU SKU
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 2202, 9/19/2016
SMBIOS Version 3.0
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
BaseBoard Product Z170-A
BaseBoard Version Rev 1.xx
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State On
PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible
Windows Directory C:\\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\\WINDOWS\\system32
Boot Device \\Device\\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.17763.194"
User Name PR3D4T0R\\Degenerate94
Time Zone Tokyo Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 15.9 GB
Available Physical Memory 9.24 GB
Total Virtual Memory 18.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 4.81 GB
Page File Space 3.00 GB
Page File C:\\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection Off
Virtualization-based security Not enabled
Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not InstantGo, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware Yes
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes
the two sticks i already had installed were
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 8GB 3000Mhz
The new sticks are
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 8GB 3200Mhz
MY SPECS
specs:
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Version 10.0.17763 Build 17763
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name PR3D4T0R
System Manufacturer System manufacturer
System Model System Product Name
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU SKU
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 2202, 9/19/2016
SMBIOS Version 3.0
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
BaseBoard Product Z170-A
BaseBoard Version Rev 1.xx
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State On
PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible
Windows Directory C:\\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\\WINDOWS\\system32
Boot Device \\Device\\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.17763.194"
User Name PR3D4T0R\\Degenerate94
Time Zone Tokyo Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 15.9 GB
Available Physical Memory 9.24 GB
Total Virtual Memory 18.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 4.81 GB
Page File Space 3.00 GB
Page File C:\\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection Off
Virtualization-based security Not enabled
Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not InstantGo, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware Yes
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes