Question Intermittently losing 8gb of installed 16gb ram.

[stripp]

This started two days ago when I powered on my PC and tried playing a game. Everything was sluggish and frozen because only 8gb of memory was being recognized (in OS and BIOS). I then restarted multiple times and it didn’t change until I powered off the system and powered it back on. It worked for around 20 minutes in Windows 10 and then blue screened from a kernel error. I restarted and checked BIOS and it showed only 8gb of memory was recognized. Then, I opened the case and switched around the dimms in the only 2 slots (mATX), powered on the PC and it worked for the entire day with 16gb of ram. The next day I powered on the PC and it only recognized 8gb of ram no matter if I restarted or powered off. It wasn’t until I removed one dimm that it began working. This is when I tested each dimm individually. Both passed and when I put them in together, the BIOS recognized 16gb again. Why is this happening? How can I tell if the problem is from my motherboard or the dimms themselves? I ran a test using memtest86 on both dimms separately and they passed. I have not made any changes to the system in the past 2 months besides swapping the dimms around yesterday.

Specs:

OS: Windows 10 Pro 22H2

—————4 years old—————
Mobo: MSI B450M Gaming Plus
CPU: Ryzen 5 2600 @ stock freq
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8GB @ 3000 mHz (stock)
—————3 years old—————
GPU: Gigabyte 5700 XT 8G
—————3 months old—————
PSU: Corsair CX750M 750 watts (New, ~3 months old)

Drives:

120 GB Free (Unused) Intel 120GB SSDSC2KW120H6 (SSD)

~311 GB Free Mushkin 500GB MKNSSDSR500GB (SSD)

~278 GB Free WD 1TB WD_BLACK SN750 SE (SSD)

~435 GB Free WD 1TB WD10EZEX-08WN4A0 (HDD)

 

[Ralston18]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used)?

Disk drive(s): make, model capacity, how full?

Look in Reliability History for any memory related error codes, warnings, or even informational events.

Or other errors, etc. that occurred just before or at the time of the freezes and blue screens.

 

[Bob.B]

This started two days ago when I powered on my PC and tried playing a game. Everything was sluggish and frozen because only 8gb of memory was being recognized (in OS and BIOS). I then restarted multiple times and it didn’t change until I powered off the system and powered it back on. It worked for around 20 minutes in Windows 10 and the blue screened from a kernel error. I restarted and checked BIOS and it showed only 8gb of memory was recognized. Then, I opened the case and switched around the dimms in the only 2 slots (mATX), powered on the PC and it worked for the entire day with 16gb of ram. The next day I powered on the PC and it only recognized 8gb of ram no matter if I restarted or powered off. It wasn’t until I removed one dimm that it began working. This is when I tested each dimm individually. Both passed and when I put them in together the BIOS recognized 16gb again. Why is this happening? How can I tell if the problem is from my motherboard or the dimms themselves? I ran a test using memtest86 on both dimms separately and they passed. I have not made any changes to the system in the past month besides swapping the dimms around yesterday.

Just to get it out of the mix replace the bios bat.....cheap test.