[SOLVED] BIOS and Windows show wrong ram size and speed after game crashed.

Apr 2, 2020
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So ive had my pc for about one year now, and its been great.

But, one week ago I got a bsod after my game crashed. The first one stated DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL(updated driver, but that didnt fix the problem), but i've gotten about 5 diffrent bsods

Ever since then im having really weird issues.

These are my pc specs:

Ryzen 5 2600

RX 580 Gaming 8GB

MSI B450 tomahawk

Ballistix 2x8GB 3000MHz

Be quiet system power 500w

Kingston a400 480GB ssd

I cant boot my pc for the first time. I have to perform a hard shutdown, or a power cycle. When I eventually boot my pc, it shows 16gb of ram. But after about 10-15 minutes in, my pc crashes. When I reboot the system it only shows 8gb of the 16gb ram usable. Also, since this crash, my ram is running at 2400Mhz, instead of 3000Mhz., according to bios , cpu-z and task manager.

When I went into the bios I saw something weird: View: https://imgur.com/a/TZAnNCH


Here you can see that above, it says ram is running at 2400MHz, even though dram frequency shows 3000MHz. It also shows memory size as 8GB.

CPU-Z shows the following: View: https://imgur.com/a/2AGun5I


Could anyone help me out?
 
Solution
Ok. So first and foremost, that model of RAM does not come in a kit. Those sticks are sold by the manufacturer as single sticks.

Secondly, the timings being reported by CPU-Z are not correct to the timings for your RAM.
As for why it shows 16GB and then 8GB, that could be due to one of the sticks being bad, the motherboard slot being bad, or the fact that the two sticks just don't want to play nicely together, or perhaps any combination of those three things.

however, have you tried just taking your CPU out (very carefully) and checking to see if there are any bent or missing pins?

if not, then make sure there's nothing inside the socket like lint and stuff, and reseat the CPU.
I'm sure you're already aware of this, but just in case...

QwerkyPengwen

Splendid
Ambassador
if you've been experiencing multiple BSOD's, then I would recommend you perform a CMOS reset to reset your BIOS back to defaults, then update the BIOS, then perform a clean install of Windows after backing up important data.

After that, do the usual to update Windows until there's no more updates and restarts required, then install the latest chipset drivers and such for your motherboard.

Then go into the BIOS and enable the XMP profile for your RAM to get it to run at it's rated speed.
If the RAM supports XMP Profile 2 then use it, otherwise, you may need to enable DOCP to support translation of XMP Profile 1. If that doesn't work, or you don't have any DOCP options, then try manually setting the speed and timings to that of what is printed on your kit labels.
 

QwerkyPengwen

Splendid
Ambassador
As stated above. try manually setting the speed, timings, and voltage as stated on your sticks.

Also as stated above, based on the model number provided, those sticks aren't sold in a kit by Crucial.
So if you bought a kit, it wasn't most likely an official one.
A kit is a single package that has the two sticks inside with all the official marketing and branding of the manufacturer.

If you purchased these two in a kit, and the kit was not official packaging, then it's not an official kit, and instead was a hand made "kit" that somebody threw together using two of these sticks.

The alternative would be that CPU-Z isn't reporting back the correct model number.
Can you take a look at the sticks themselves and tell us the model number that is printed on them?
This will help us to determine if either you don't have an official proper 2x8GB kit of RAM, or if CPU-Z and BIOS are not reading and reporting the info correctly.

We need this knowledge to help further narrow down the issue here.
 
Apr 2, 2020
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I removed my ram and made a picture of the stickers on the modules: View: https://imgur.com/a/g7OXM4H


To add some info that might help: I reseated ram yesterday, and the bios and cpu-z now show the correct speed (however cpu-z still reports max bandwith as 2400Mhz). But i still crash at random intervals. I don't get a BSOD, but the pc restart really fast, im back and running in 10sec after a the crash. After such a crash it reports 8gb of memory and 2400Mhz.
 

QwerkyPengwen

Splendid
Ambassador
Ok. So first and foremost, that model of RAM does not come in a kit. Those sticks are sold by the manufacturer as single sticks.

Secondly, the timings being reported by CPU-Z are not correct to the timings for your RAM.
As for why it shows 16GB and then 8GB, that could be due to one of the sticks being bad, the motherboard slot being bad, or the fact that the two sticks just don't want to play nicely together, or perhaps any combination of those three things.

however, have you tried just taking your CPU out (very carefully) and checking to see if there are any bent or missing pins?

if not, then make sure there's nothing inside the socket like lint and stuff, and reseat the CPU.
I'm sure you're already aware of this, but just in case, when removing a cooler from a CPU, you should clean the CPU and the cooler's heatsink of thermal paste, and apply fresh thermal paste.

if you don't have thermal paste lying around, you can get some on Amazon pretty cheap.
Arctic Silver 5 can be had in a package of 2 for like $5. It's not the most high end stuff, but it's not worse than what comes pre applied to coolers you can buy, so at the very least it's the same quality.

Before doing any of that though, I want you to remove a single stick, leaving only the one stick in the first RAM slot (this is either A1 or A2, please refer to you motherboard manual for this information.)

And use the system with a single stick and see if you get any crashes or whatnot.
Then after confirming if either all is well or all is not well, I want you to power down properly, then change out the sticks and test the other one.

See if either stick by itself has any issues.

If no issues, then I want you to, as I mentioned before but you clearly seem to have completely ignored, is to update the BIOS, and also do a CMOS reset to reset the BIOS back to defaults.

After this, ignore the XMP profile, and instead, manually enter the configuration for your RAM.
This is the speeds, the timings, and the voltage.

Test things after that to see if things report back normally.
 
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Solution