Seeking help on RAM not usable issue.

[valkyrtwitch]

Hey guys sorry for this long post but I'm at the end of rope here after almost 3 weeks of exhausting my knowledge of pc's trying to fix this so thanks for taking the time.

I've recently dropped some serious coin into my pc by upgrading the RAM and GPU those being Corsair 2x8Gb DDR3 1600 and an EVGA GTX 1080Ti respectively, now I've had no problems whatsoever with the 1080 it went in and is behaving exactly as it should my problem seems to be with the RAM.

And here we go.

I had 12Gb mixed RAM, 1x8Gb and 1x4Gb and yes I know this was stupid but it worked for 3+ years with no issues, However after I installed the Corsair 8Gb sticks it seemed to work as expected as my pc was showing all 16Gb there and useable, so after installing the Nvidia Drivers for the 1080 it restarted as it should but took ages to reboot itself so went looking around the system to see what was wrong and noticed that my memory was now 16Gb (7.96 Available).

So I did some research on Google and tried what was said such as going through ms config to see if the max memory was set, it wasn't, so tried a few other things all of which did not work so then I tried reinstalling my old RAM back into the system and it did the same thing, 12Gb but only 7.96 available again so believing that the ram slot itself was faulty in some way i bought a new motherboard of the same chipset so I could keep my CPU.

When I first tried to boot nothing happened, there was power but nothing happened so I messed around with the Corsair sticks to find out that 1 stick works and boots the system but the system will not boot on either motherboard with both sticks installed in any configuration, everything starts up it just doesn't get anywhere, so assuming the corsair is faulty I reinstalled my old RAM again but somehow this time my main HDD became corrupted so I had to use my Win10 Bootable USB to reinstall windows and by magic when it installed my full 12Gb was there and fully useable.

Now believing that I had finally found a fix (2 weeks in) I tried the Corsair again and once again system would not boot which to be honest I wasn't really fussed by as I already have an RMA started for them as I assumed one stick was faulty anyway, so i reinstalled the 12Gb of RAM again and voila 12Gb fully useable, then windows decided to update and bang back to 7.96 useable.

So kicking myself thinking that Windows updates were probably to blame for the whole situation (we know how they can be) I rebooted Win10 again off the USB and once again 12Gb of RAM fully useable, now this time I stopped Windows from updating believing it was to blame and went to install the Nvidia Drivers for the 1080 and again after the restart I only have 7.96 available of the 12 installed so I'm now back to square 1.

It seems like when I fresh install windows it can use all the RAM but when I restart for any reason it drops it back down to 7.96 on both motherboards and this is without any other action so simply;

Fresh install > Boots to desktop > 12Gb > restart > 7.96 available.

This is with no Internet access so it couldn't d/load anything behind my back and now i am at a loss at what to do next and I'm here hoping someone on here can help me sort this out as it is now just frustrating me to the point I want to RMA the whole lot and be done with it.

I would like to point out that during this whole process the BIOS on both Motherboards shows the full amount of RAM all the time so even when windows is saying 7.96 the BIOS is always showing 12, the only thing I found strange was that it was on 1333 instead of 1600 which both sets of RAM are but when it comes to fiddling with voltages and frequencies in the BIOS I'm a little apprehensive as I don't have alot of experience with it and I don't want to break anything

I'd also like to note that with the Corsair RAM I only managed to get my pc to boot 1 time with both sticks installed which was the first time on my original motherboard, every time after that it failed to boot with both sticks installed on both motherboards in any configuration.

So yeah again sorry for the long post I'm just trying to get as much detail in as I can because I'm seriously at a loss as to what is causing this, the only thing I have left to try is reinstalling my old GPU with my old RAM as it was before I upgraded anything and to see if it does the same thing which I'll do tomorrow (it's 2.30am rn) and will update the thread but I can't see the GPU having any effect on how much RAM windows can use, but maybe I'm wrong on that.

PC Specs
Motherboard
Old - MSI 970 Gaming AM3+
New - Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AM3+

CPU
AMD FX8350 (it's been nearly 4 years since I bought it so going off the BIOS as I have no clue)

GPU
Old - XFX Radeon R9 290X 4Gb
New - EVGA GTX1080Ti 11Gb

RAM
Old - 1X8Gb Mushkin & 1x4Gb Kingston slim, both 1.5v 1600
New - 2x8Gb Corsair Vengeance 1.5v 1600

PSU
Powercool 850w modular

HDD
1x320Gb Seagate (used for OS and important software)
1x1Tb WD blue (used for games and such)

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give and for reading all of this.

Dan

 

[anotherdrew]

When you see "Hardware reserved" that is normally your motherboard setting aside memory. In most systems this will be memory to support integrated graphics (which you don't have). The other possibility is one stick does not pass the POST memory test. The BIOS will verify the memory is there, but won't let the system use it. This can be due to a bad stick of RAM or when 2 sticks are incompatible.

Sometimes you can get past incompatible sticks by not running them in dual channel mode. For the MSI board, it will try to run dual channel if you install sticks in DIMM1 and DIMM3 ( or 2 and 4). Installing sticks in 1 and 2 would then not work as dual channel. Yes, you give give up some performance, but it might work.

BTW, you were experiencing less memory on your 2nd boot. I expect this is because you have a fast boot enabled which then skips the memory test in POST, the system then sees issues while running and thus shuts down one stick on the next boot.

 

[valkyrtwitch]

@anotherdrew Thanks for the reply, sorry taken so long to get back it seems to have worked putting in single channel and I think you were spot on about the POST check as the I hadn't even considered it but makes sense gonna send the RAM back and see what's happend with the new sticks but at least this is working for now.

Cheers mate.