Bad Memory Controller or bad Memory or Bad Motherboard Dimms?

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Blake Corcoran

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Aug 28, 2013
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Hello. Thank you in advance for you all of your help

I currently have a ASUS Sabretooth 990FX Gen 3 R2.0 Motherboard with AMD FX 8350 cpu and 4 x4gb Corsair Vengeance Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1866 MHz (PC3 15000) ram. the problem I have is sometimes it will show 16gb of ram, but only 7.98 usuable. This will happen whether its 2 sticks, or 4. I have reset CPU, cmos, updated bios. reinstalled windows. adjusted the voltage and more. ran Memtest when showing 16gb usuable and had 0 errors.

but nothing seems to fix the issue permanently

So is there any way to tell if the CPU memory controller is causing this or one of the other two? I dont want to replace teh CPU for no reason, and also dont want to send my motherboard in for repair and not have a computer for 2 to 3 weeks.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
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RaDiKaL_

RaDiKaL_

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Apr 17, 2006
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I don't think it has a defective memory controller, else memtest would have also failed to use all available RAM.

I assume you have at least Windows 64bits Home Premium or better, Home basic will only be able to use 8Gig of RAM.

Run msconfig, go to "Boot" tab->advanced options and see if the max amount of memory is enabled, if so, disable it so your OS uses the full amount of it.
 
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Blake Corcoran

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Aug 28, 2013
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I have windows 8.1 Pro 64bit . the thing is. it will show 16gb usuable and there. but the next time i reboot it will show 16gb but only 7.98 usable again. it is random. sometimes it works fine for a few days, then doesn't work.
 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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Oct 5, 2007
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As I said, the memory controller is on the CPU and I doubt that is the issue. It could be but I have yet to run into one.

My suggestion is to go into the BIOS and there should be the option for the RAM to run X.M.P. which means it will pull the specs right from the RAM and all Corsair RAM is normally X.M.P. compatible. I have been running Corsair since the very first version of XMA and Asus motherboards and I have yet to have a compatibility issue.

Try that and see if it starts to act better.

Another thing to always check is to see how much is showing at POST. If it is always showing 16GB at POST then it could be a software issues.
 
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Blake Corcoran

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Aug 28, 2013
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I actually have tried to set everything correctly in the BIOS. have chosen XMP. i have increased the voltage as well. in POST it shows the same issue, sometimes 16gb sometimes only 8gb.

 
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