Bios only recognizing 7GB of the 8GB RAM I have installed?

ericpettis · Dec 11, 2013

I have memory remapping enabled in bios and just the other day both the bios and windows were recognizing all 8GB of RAM. I tried messing with some of the memory timings and poof one GB of RAM disappeared. I tried loading the fail-safe defaults and the optimized defaults from the bios to no avail. The bios is still only recognizing 7GB of RAM.

System Specs:
Nettle 2 HP MoBo (flashed with an overclockable bios)
AMD Athlon x2 6000+ (3.2Ghz)
8GB (2GBx4) Corsair PC2-6400 (6-6-6-12)
PNY GTS 250
Windows 8.1 x64

ldewitt · Dec 11, 2013

I'd pull the ram out. Power it on(of course you will get no where without RAM) power it off(most cases will power off auto or not even turn on in the first place) then put it back in and see if it recognizes the who 8GB.

ericpettis · Dec 11, 2013

Okay so I took out the all of my RAM and managed to boot by putting the "culprit" into the first slot of my motherboard. The bios is reading it as only having 1GB and it continues to show the same amount when remapping is enabled and disabled. CPU-Z is showing slot #1: 1024MB as well, I know for a fact that this is a 2GB stick. What gives?

Update: It seems to me that no matter what slot I put the stick in, it's showing up as 1024 instead of the 2GB like it was before.

ldewitt · Dec 11, 2013

Are they dual sided RAM sticks?

ericpettis · Dec 11, 2013

By the looks of it they are dual sided. They have memory modules on each side of the stick. Just to add the motherboard that I'm operating with supports dual-channel RAM which is what it was reading prior to the GB of memory "vanishing". Now with only 1GB installed or "7GB" installed it is reading single-channel after the computer posts.

I also was fooling around with some of the bios settings trying to hopefully tweak the memory back into thinking it was 2GB (which it is), and I somehow got the RAM to run at 1T timings. I know for a fact with all of the sticks in the motherboard that isn't possible as the board just beeps, so any input on that would be great as well. I would really like to get to the bottom of this. Thanks.

ldewitt · Dec 11, 2013

From what i'm getting you have 4 x 2GB sticks. With that in mind im pretty sure that one half of one of those sticks has failed giving you only 1GB of the 2GB stick.

ericpettis · Dec 11, 2013

I was reading on another post here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/39147-30-single-double-sided
"Otherwise, the PC might end up convinced that your memory has only half the storage capacity that it is actually capable of."

Could it be possible that the RAM is tricked into thinking that it's only single-sided? I'm lost as to what would be the cause of the issue that I'm having.

ldewitt · Dec 11, 2013

ericpettis :

"So for old PCs you should use.....Otherwise, the PC might end up convinced that your memory has only half the storage capacity that it is actually capable of."

I don't think the PC you have is this old. I'm sure of one side of your RAM Stick is half fried. Try it in another PC.

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Bios only recognizing 7GB of the 8GB RAM I have installed?

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