6GB RAM installed, only 3GB available? (says the BIOS)

DimaShuster

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Jun 27, 2015
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My old computer has 4GB of RAM, (2 sticks, 2GB each) I wanted to add some more to it so I recently bought an extra 2GB DDR2 stick, but I simply couldn't get it to work.

While trying to simply install it in addition to the other two, it actually reduced the amount of RAM that appears on my BIOS (it says I have 3328 available instead of having at least 4gb). In the Windows computer information it says that I have 6GB installed & 3.25GB usable.

I looked online for solutions, among the things I tried are as follows:

Verified that my motherboard actually supports more than 4GB of RAM, it seems it does.
Updated the BIOS to the latest version
Played around with the speed & voltage settings in the BIOS
Made sure I connected the stick properly
Tried to connect the stick to other ports and move the other ones around as well.
Removed the battery on the motherboard to reset the CMOS
msconfig - made sure there's no limit.
When I connected the new stick on it's own, there was no display and the computer wouldn't boot, the fans were running though, no beeps.

What's interesting is that when I place it in with the others, the computer detects it and says I have 6gb installed but it won't accept it for some reason?

I'll be more than grateful to know what I'm missing before I'm returning this to the store.

And just to clarify, the problem is not only in the OS, I'm talking about what I see in the BIOS - it means that the OS isn't even getting that memory, meaning that it can't be using it.

My computer specifications:

Motherboard: Asus P5k Deluxe, BIOS Ver.: 1005
OS: Windows 7 64 bit
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad
4GB RAM (2x 2GB DDR2 sticks)

The new stick is:
DDR2 (800) 2GB
 

DimaShuster

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Jun 27, 2015
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4,510


I highered the DRAM voltage by 0.05 a few times and reached 2, the NB voltage was set to auto though as I wasn't sure what that means. could that be it?
 

DimaShuster

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Jun 27, 2015
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So I changed the NB voltage, but nothing's changed.
I couldn't really match it to the DRAM voltage though, the maximum I have is 1.75.