Memory not read by bios, is read by windows

[greynut]

i dont know who else to mention this head case to, so i came here as i read on this site and it has always been hepful. i didnt see anything for my motherboard so heres the deal..... i have 3 sets of ram, each set on 2 sticks, unifosa, kingston hyperX, and pny optima. the ram sizes are all 4gb sticks, but 4gb reads in bios even with bios updates and cleared cmos..... everytime there is 2 of the 4gb sticks the first slot just does not read ram. i have even switched out to the sempron 140 and to no advantage it didnt change anything. and the first slot of ram by itself is a no-post. the bios update should have fixed it, but it did not ,. the sempron rules out the fx processor as the culprite so what is it? stumped....

system

ASUS M5A78L LX PLUS
fx-6100 with ALL bios updates
160 gb harddrive
gts 250 (not currently installed)

breakdown

sticks installed 4bg sticks, only 4 gb read, should be 8gb, across the board all the ram i tried.
windows reads 8 installed 4 usable.
bios reads only 4 installed, even when there is 8

closing

i tried 2 brand new motherboards and both had the same problem, no fix so far tried everything even returned for replacement and call asus, they say its a bad board, both boards........no bios flash did anything, no cmos clear fixed the problem.

this could be a case closed "bad board" but i hope someone tells me the obvious solution i missed here, hopefully there is one

all of the ram works fine in my GA-880gm-usb3 mobo, so i know that none of the ram is faulty

maybe a bios option for the asus to fix it? i just dont know what the deal is.....

 

[daysyang]

what os do u have installed windows 32bit (will only allow 4GB usable) or 64bit?
you got me confused with ram... So you have
3 set 2 sticks a set so: unifos(2x4GB), kingston(2x4GB), and PNY(2x4GB)...
and you tried each of them and your bios can only see 4GB, also windows only sees 8GB but only 4GB usable?

 

[greynut]

i installed 64 bit windows. that is another reason why this stumps me, 2x stick of each ram type. 4 gb on each stick that is correct.

 

[greynut]

Everything works now. The GA-880GM-usb3 mobo had one single stand-off under the mobo that shorted the asus #1 ram slot. I knew that the second motherboard was not faulty so i did not return it and waited for this to be solved. so when i changed the motherboards is should have removed that one stand off before installing the asus. with that said, components can be shorted and appear to be dead but they are fine after all. if i hadent taken out that stand off, i would have been stumped for life and switched to intel lol. i knew the motherboard was not bad.

this motherboard is an overclocking beast and i was not about to get rid of it. sure there are better mobos out but for the price and performance i got what i wanted.