Question New RAM preventing BIOS settings from saving - investigation and questions

[anastasioplinth]

My motherboard is a Gigabyte AORUS X470 and my CPU is a Ryzen 7 2700X

The machine has been working great for years, but I use a lot of virtual machines for work so I decided to upgrade from 16Gb RAM to 32Gb for a little more comfort, going from 2 x 8Gb of Vengeance LPX to 2 x 16Gb.

(Specifically the two new sticks are CMK32GX4M2E3200C16)

On installing the new sticks, the machine booted without an issue, detected that it had 32Gb of memory, the Windows Memory Diagnostic found no errors.

However, virtualisation had been disabled in the BIOS so I couldn't do my work. I booted into the BIOS and found all the settings had reset. After multiple resets-reboots-tests I determined that NO settings were saving no matter what combination I chose and the BIOS was constantly resetting itself to default. I didn't think it was the CMOS battery as everything else seemed fine but figured there was no harm in changing it so I did. With a fresh battery, settings still did not save.

Beginning to suspect the RAM itself, I swapped back to the two original 2 x 8Gb sticks and now the BIOS settings are saving no problem and virtualisation is reenabled. It seems that something in the new RAM sticks is causing a problem.

I am now at the limit of my expertise. Does it seem likely that the sticks are physically faulty, or are they incompatible with my board/CPU in a way that I missed while researching, or was I not setting the BIOS memory settings correctly for them (I left all the memory frequencies on Auto)? What else should I do to investigate further?

Any help much appreciated, thank you!

Update: Reading a few more threads after posting this one I discovered this page breaking down which CPU/Memory combinations are supported for different AMD families. I figured out the Ryzen 7 2700X is a "Pinnacle Ridge" and therefore it seems these new sticks are not supported.

Mystery solved at least, and I'll remember this for future upgrades. Leaving this here in case it helps anybody else in future.

 

[Koekieezz]

My motherboard is a Gigabyte AORUS X470 and my CPU is a Ryzen 7 2700X

The machine has been working great for years, but I use a lot of virtual machines for work so I decided to upgrade from 16Gb RAM to 32Gb for a little more comfort, going from 2 x 8Gb of Vengeance LPX to 2 x 16Gb.

(Specifically the two new sticks are CMK32GX4M2E3200C16)

On installing the new sticks, the machine booted without an issue, detected that it had 32Gb of memory, the Windows Memory Diagnostic found no errors.

However, virtualisation had been disabled in the BIOS so I couldn't do my work. I booted into the BIOS and found all the settings had reset. After multiple resets-reboots-tests I determined that NO settings were saving no matter what combination I chose and the BIOS was constantly resetting itself to default. I didn't think it was the CMOS battery as everything else seemed fine but figured there was no harm in changing it so I did. With a fresh battery, settings still did not save.

Beginning to suspect the RAM itself, I swapped back to the two original 2 x 8Gb sticks and now the BIOS settings are saving no problem and virtualisation is reenabled. It seems that something in the new RAM sticks is causing a problem.

I am now at the limit of my expertise. Does it seem likely that the sticks are physically faulty, or are they incompatible with my board/CPU in a way that I missed while researching, or was I not setting the BIOS memory settings correctly for them (I left all the memory frequencies on Auto)? What else should I do to investigate further?

Any help much appreciated, thank you!

follow this step by step in order (read till end):

• Use the 2x16gb dimms only at slot 2 and 4
• Disconnect from internet
• Uninstall every gpu driver using DDU (clean and do not restart).
• Uninstall all the processors (is a must, should be 16 on yours since it's 16 threads, also when it asks for restart, click on no and keep uninstalling all processors) on device manager like this:
  
  
  
  
  
• Uninstall AMD Chipset Software in control panel (if there is none, skip it.)
  
  
• shut down the PC, disable AMD fTPM and secure boot, save and exit, go to bios again, flash to the latest bios version F63c with agesa 1.2.0.7 if you're already at bios F41 and above, if you're under it, flash to bios to F40 first, then go to the latest F63c, go to bios after finished updating, load default or optimized settings, then save and exit.
  
  Optional: disable CSM, enable Above 4G Decoding and Resizable bar option (these 2 options wont be available unless CSM is disabled). If your gpu support amd sam/nvidia rebar then it's not a big deal to enable the feature
  
  
• if successful, boot up to windows and install the latest Chipset driver (should be ver 4.06.xx), then reboot.
  
  
• Install the latest gpu driver, reboot, and then connect to internet.
  
  *do this all offline until reboot after installing chipset driver, put ram on slot A2 and B2 (slot 2 and 4), also you may reboot to bios after all of this to set the XMP (and previous settings you did). Download needed files (highlighted word) before doing step 1, do the step by orders.
  
  
• Run cmd as admin, then do chkdsk /x /f /r, after that do sfc /scannow
  
  
• And check windows update if there is any and install them (except optional update).
  
  
• Make sure the psu connected to the gpu is 1 pcie cable per 1 slot (use main cable, not the branches/split) like this: