[SOLVED] Unusable hardware reserved ram. Only 8GB of 16GB usable. Incompatible ram?

[Trevorar5111]

So my PC is over 4 year old and I wanted to give it it's first real upgrade. I'm switching to an AMD Ryzen 2600 cpu, ASRock B450M Pro 4 mobo, and Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2x8GB 2933MHz ram. Everything's gone smoothly up until I noticed that only half the memory was "usable" while the other half was in "hardware reserved."

The BIOS showed no problems, all 16GB were there. I've installed the ram in the correct slots (according to the manuel).

I've spent the past couple days trying everything I could find online about this: I updated the bios, cleared the cmos, reinstalled windows, unchecked max memory in msconfig, each stick tested properly in memtest86, I played around with LOST of bios ram settings to see if anything would change. tried swapping slots, and tried the windows memory diagnose tool. Nothing helped. Interestingly, the mobo goes into a looping reset, and won't boot, when there is only one stick installed, no matter the slot.

Honestly I'm out of options. The only other thing I could think of is that the ram I got in not on the mobo's QVL. But on my old mobo (Gigabyte) the memory was not on the QVL list and it worked great! Is it just that Gigabyte's boards don't care as much about the ram as ASRocks's do? Is it just that I'm dumb for ignoring the QVL? I want to know for sure because I don't want to buy more ram just to find that the issue is still there.

 

[Trevorar5111]

I thought I should mention it was the Windows Resource Monitor and Task Manager that reported that only half the ram was usable.

 

[SaltJackalope]

Idk if you are still having this problem, but I had the same problem. To fix it, I tested each of my ram slots with only one RAM stick to see if the pc could boot with each slot alone. After doing this, I discovered that two of my RAM slots were detecting the RAM in my bios but weren't actually using the RAM or booting when I exclusively used one RAM stick in them. From this information, I concluded that it was probably a problem with my CPU, so I loosened up my CPU fan and made sure no pins were bent in the CPU. If you have the same problem, look up hoe to do this safely before messing with the CPU at all, because it is very fragile. Idk if this helped you, but if not, I have a whole guide on troubleshooting the RAM on my account that might help.

 

[Trevorar5111]

Idk if you are still having this problem, but I had the same problem. To fix it, I tested each of my ram slots with only one RAM stick to see if the pc could boot with each slot alone. After doing this, I discovered that two of my RAM slots were detecting the RAM in my bios but weren't actually using the RAM or booting when I exclusively used one RAM stick in them. From this information, I concluded that it was probably a problem with my CPU, so I loosened up my CPU fan and made sure no pins were bent in the CPU. If you have the same problem, look up hoe to do this safely before messing with the CPU at all, because it is very fragile. Idk if this helped you, but if not, I have a whole guide on troubleshooting the RAM on my account that might help.

Hi, thanks for your help. I tried what you said, one stick at a time. I had the same problem and PC would not boot with one stick of RAM in. I also tried to reseat the CPU but with no luck. I ended up replacing the board a few days ago and turns out that solved the problem. Not sure where the problem got fixed, if it was a compatibility issue or a bad mobo, but the important part is that the issue is gone now.

 

[SaltJackalope]

Hi, thanks for your help. I tried what you said, one stick at a time. I had the same problem and PC would not boot with one stick of RAM in. I also tried to reseat the CPU but with no luck. I ended up replacing the board a few days ago and turns out that solved the problem. Not sure where the problem got fixed, if it was a compatibility issue or a bad mobo, but the important part is that the issue is gone now.

That's odd. Glad that you got it working though!

 

[Trevorar5111]

I just wanted to makes this quick update, the issue started happening AGAIN (only 8 of 16GB were usable). But found out what the problem was this time pretty quickly. It's the same ASRock B450M Pro 4 as last time, the motherboard I had replaced the faulty one with. This may have been what was happening last time: essentially, the ASRock auto-detected the ram to be 2666 MHz, when they are actually 2933 MHz. I assume this is what caused Windows to render half the ram unusable. After correcting the speed in the BIOS, problem was solved, all 16GB were available again.