Hello,
First time poster and first time builder. As the title states I'm have strange issues with my RAM and I don't really know what to do or what to try next. Google searches and referencing my friends has only got me so far so I'm hoping someone here could help me out. To put you where I am I'm going to try to be as thorough as possible, so please bear with me!
Firstly, my system specs...
Power Supply: Corsair RMx RM1000X
Motherboard: MSI X99A SLI PLUS LGA 2011-v3
Processor: Intel Core i7 5820K Haswell-E 6-Core
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1
So like I said this is my first official build. Upon completion I booted it up and everything went relatively smoothly. In the BIOS all my components were recognized and functioning. I then went ahead and installed Windows with no problems and afterward installed the drivers for each component and also had no problems.
Now that those steps were complete I decided to format my old Western Digital 1TB hard drive that I had because I needed room to install games. It should be noted this hard drive had a problem with it that I found in CrystalDiskInfo -- the "Current Pending Sector Count" and "Uncorrectable Sector Count" both had raw values of (000000000007). I thought maybe if I thoroughly formatted it that it might fix that. Maybe that was stupid? I'm not sure. Regardless this may or may not have anything to do with my RAM issue I just thought I'd include it because it might. Anyhow, I let the format run overnight because I knew it would take a bit but when I woke up my computer was shutdown. When I booted it back up it said something along the lines of Windows had crashed so I knew the format didn't complete correctly. So I then put the format on hold and tried to figure out why.
I then went ahead and decided to run the Windows Updater which no doubt picked up hundreds of updates... I figured it'd be fine to just install them all at once. In the middle of the updates I received a BSOD (the first of many) and it basically had to uninstall over half of them by reverting changes the next boot. From then on I started getting random BSOD stating various errors such as "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA", "SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION", and "BAD_POOL_HEADER". After Googling for a while I came to the conclusion it might be my ram so I went ahead and ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool. Once it finished it said that my computer had a memory problem. After a few hours my computer got plagued down so much by BSOD that I couldn't even get into Windows or Windows repair so that left me with no choice but to open my rig back up.
I first disconnected my old 1TB Western Digital hard drive (because I read that could interfere or even be the cause) and then I double-checked my motherboard's manual to make sure I situated each stick of RAM in the right channel. I had one stick in DIMM1 and the other in DIMM5 for dual-channel mode (I have 8 DIMM slots as follows -- 1234 8765). I read online to check each stick one at a time so I proceeded to do that next. Here's where my problem comes in -- upon booting back up with one stick I didn't receive any BSOD but in the BIOS it said I only had 4GB of ram even though I had 8GB. So I turned it off, tried the other stick and got the same results, 4GB. I then decided to put them back in again together the same way I had them in the first place (thinking maybe I hadn't seated them properly). The BIOS then said I had 12GB. What??? That's when I was really confused... but I was able to boot back into Windows without getting any BSOD. I checked in CPU-Z and it could see I had 16GB. I then ran Memtest86 overnight and it found no issues. Then I wanted to see if the Windows Memory Diagnostic would give me the same results as before but this time it found no issues.
My friend then suggested I burn in my CPU and do a few benchmark tests to check system stability so I did.
So at this point I've tried...
- Running Windows Memory Diagnostic (first time it said I had memory problem, second time it found nothing).
- Disconnecting my faulty hard drive (didn't seem to fix anything).
- Using only one stick at a time (only recognized 4GB of the 8GB).
- Using only one stick in different DIMM slots but my monitor wouldn't turn on then.
- Using both stick in different channels (only recognized 12GB)
- Running Memtest86 on one stick -- not the other... I should have ran it on both but I didn't and I don't know why (found no issues though).
- Running Prime95, 3 memory heavy tests (no screen artifacting and CPU stayed under 50 degrees Celsius).
- Running Unigine Heaven and Valley on extreme (no issues, FPS hovered around 45-70, GPU was 75 degrees Celsius and CPU got no hotter than 45 degrees Celsius).
- Running the free version of 3DMark 11 on normal (no issues and pretty much same results as Unigine).
It should be noted throughout I was keeping an eye on CoreTemp and my CPU cores always remained right around 30 degrees Celsius.
Anyway to summarize... at this point both my BIOS and Windows only see 12GB of my 16GB of RAM while programs such as CPU-Z and 3DMark 11 see the full 16GB. What is the deal? Is there something I'm missing? Could my RAM be faulty? Motherboard be faulty? CPU be faulty or seated incorrectly? I just can't figure it out and I desperately need some advice.
ANY ADVICE IS GREATLY APPRECIATED! Thanks in advance and I apologize for my novel-long post...
First time poster and first time builder. As the title states I'm have strange issues with my RAM and I don't really know what to do or what to try next. Google searches and referencing my friends has only got me so far so I'm hoping someone here could help me out. To put you where I am I'm going to try to be as thorough as possible, so please bear with me!
Firstly, my system specs...
Power Supply: Corsair RMx RM1000X
Motherboard: MSI X99A SLI PLUS LGA 2011-v3
Processor: Intel Core i7 5820K Haswell-E 6-Core
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1
So like I said this is my first official build. Upon completion I booted it up and everything went relatively smoothly. In the BIOS all my components were recognized and functioning. I then went ahead and installed Windows with no problems and afterward installed the drivers for each component and also had no problems.
Now that those steps were complete I decided to format my old Western Digital 1TB hard drive that I had because I needed room to install games. It should be noted this hard drive had a problem with it that I found in CrystalDiskInfo -- the "Current Pending Sector Count" and "Uncorrectable Sector Count" both had raw values of (000000000007). I thought maybe if I thoroughly formatted it that it might fix that. Maybe that was stupid? I'm not sure. Regardless this may or may not have anything to do with my RAM issue I just thought I'd include it because it might. Anyhow, I let the format run overnight because I knew it would take a bit but when I woke up my computer was shutdown. When I booted it back up it said something along the lines of Windows had crashed so I knew the format didn't complete correctly. So I then put the format on hold and tried to figure out why.
I then went ahead and decided to run the Windows Updater which no doubt picked up hundreds of updates... I figured it'd be fine to just install them all at once. In the middle of the updates I received a BSOD (the first of many) and it basically had to uninstall over half of them by reverting changes the next boot. From then on I started getting random BSOD stating various errors such as "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA", "SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION", and "BAD_POOL_HEADER". After Googling for a while I came to the conclusion it might be my ram so I went ahead and ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool. Once it finished it said that my computer had a memory problem. After a few hours my computer got plagued down so much by BSOD that I couldn't even get into Windows or Windows repair so that left me with no choice but to open my rig back up.
I first disconnected my old 1TB Western Digital hard drive (because I read that could interfere or even be the cause) and then I double-checked my motherboard's manual to make sure I situated each stick of RAM in the right channel. I had one stick in DIMM1 and the other in DIMM5 for dual-channel mode (I have 8 DIMM slots as follows -- 1234 8765). I read online to check each stick one at a time so I proceeded to do that next. Here's where my problem comes in -- upon booting back up with one stick I didn't receive any BSOD but in the BIOS it said I only had 4GB of ram even though I had 8GB. So I turned it off, tried the other stick and got the same results, 4GB. I then decided to put them back in again together the same way I had them in the first place (thinking maybe I hadn't seated them properly). The BIOS then said I had 12GB. What??? That's when I was really confused... but I was able to boot back into Windows without getting any BSOD. I checked in CPU-Z and it could see I had 16GB. I then ran Memtest86 overnight and it found no issues. Then I wanted to see if the Windows Memory Diagnostic would give me the same results as before but this time it found no issues.
My friend then suggested I burn in my CPU and do a few benchmark tests to check system stability so I did.
So at this point I've tried...
- Running Windows Memory Diagnostic (first time it said I had memory problem, second time it found nothing).
- Disconnecting my faulty hard drive (didn't seem to fix anything).
- Using only one stick at a time (only recognized 4GB of the 8GB).
- Using only one stick in different DIMM slots but my monitor wouldn't turn on then.
- Using both stick in different channels (only recognized 12GB)
- Running Memtest86 on one stick -- not the other... I should have ran it on both but I didn't and I don't know why (found no issues though).
- Running Prime95, 3 memory heavy tests (no screen artifacting and CPU stayed under 50 degrees Celsius).
- Running Unigine Heaven and Valley on extreme (no issues, FPS hovered around 45-70, GPU was 75 degrees Celsius and CPU got no hotter than 45 degrees Celsius).
- Running the free version of 3DMark 11 on normal (no issues and pretty much same results as Unigine).
It should be noted throughout I was keeping an eye on CoreTemp and my CPU cores always remained right around 30 degrees Celsius.
Anyway to summarize... at this point both my BIOS and Windows only see 12GB of my 16GB of RAM while programs such as CPU-Z and 3DMark 11 see the full 16GB. What is the deal? Is there something I'm missing? Could my RAM be faulty? Motherboard be faulty? CPU be faulty or seated incorrectly? I just can't figure it out and I desperately need some advice.
ANY ADVICE IS GREATLY APPRECIATED! Thanks in advance and I apologize for my novel-long post...
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