Question Have I maxed out RAM on this old machine or is there a way to make all of it accessible?

[sdhaku]

I built this machine back in 2009 and have made as many mods over the years to keep it hanging on, honestly maxing out everywhere area I could. It's still a great machine. One of the pain points has been the RAM so recently I upgraded to 6 sticks of Samsung M378B1G73QH0-CK0 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz Desktop Memory RAM. This is listed as compatible with the MOBO. When I go into the Resource Monitor I do see 49152 MB of installed memory. However, it only says 11005 MB is available. I understand this machine is old from software and hardware standpoint but is there anything I can do to make all this RAM available? Perhaps go into the BIOS and change some settings or something?

OS: Win7 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor
MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

 

[punkncat]

Take a look here:

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-EX58-UD5-rev-10/sp#sp

It appears the board may not properly allocate 8GB sticks.

 

[sdhaku]

Take a look here:

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-EX58-UD5-rev-10/sp#sp

It appears the board may not properly allocate 8GB sticks.

That's interesting. I do see "

• 6 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 24 GB of system memory (Note 1)

Due to Windows Vista/XP 32-bit operating system limitation, when more than 4 GB of physical memory is installed, the actual memory size displayed will be less than 4 GB."

I'm pretty sure I'm running the 64-bit version of Win7 Pro and even so shouldn't I still see at least 24GB available?

 

[punkncat]

That's interesting. I do see "

• 6 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 24 GB of system memory (Note 1)

Due to Windows Vista/XP 32-bit operating system limitation, when more than 4 GB of physical memory is installed, the actual memory size displayed will be less than 4 GB."

I'm pretty sure I'm running the 64-bit version of Win7 Pro and even so shouldn't I still see at least 24GB available?

I also am curious about that, but they are stating in 'black and white' that the system can't use that much RAM. Perhaps take out pairs of sticks until it coincides, if at all?

 

[sdhaku]

I found this online so the OS should be fine. Maybe it's the MOBO.

64-bit (x64) Windows 7 Maximum RAM Limit per Edition

• Home Basic: 8GB
• Home Premium: 16GB
• Professional: 192GB - this is what I have
• Enterprise: 192GB
• Ultimate: 192GB

 

[punkncat]

I found this online so the OS should be fine. Maybe it's the MOBO.

64-bit (x64) Windows 7 Maximum RAM Limit per Edition

• Home Basic: 8GB
• Home Premium: 16GB
• Professional: 192GB - this is what I have
• Enterprise: 192GB
• Ultimate: 192GB

I just told you above, it IS the motherboard. Right there in the link.

 

[stonecarver]

These old board don't list 8 Gb of system memory Per stick as back than 8 Gb sticks were uncommon.

Every 1366 board I have does not officially say it supports decking out the motherboard with all 8Gb stick but IT does work.

And yes a little weird being total of 48Gb's with 6 slots verses the norm 16/32/64 we get with 4 memory slots.

 

[sdhaku]

Wow! I got it to work! The unfortunate thing is I don't know exactly what did it. I did take some time to look at the RAM slots in the manual after watching this video. I did try various configs of putting one stick of RAM in at a time and turning my machine on and off.

Something I feel like could have screwed things up is I went into msconfig-> Boot -> Advanced Boot Options - > and turned off "Maximum memory." After I did this my computer would stall on startup and never made it back into Windows. Not sure if that was the cause but I'm turned it back on and the system actually populated with the number 49149!

If you have a similar problem my advice is to install one stick at a time and try different orders. The video linked above says to start in slot 4 then go to slot 2. Honestly I tried a number of configs and even held down the button on the MOBO which may have helped reset the BIOS but again I unfortunately don't know the exact thing that did correct the issue.