What if i went over my motherboard ram capacity ?

Ducu27 · Sep 12, 2016

Heya here's my setup

Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate
Intel i7 950 3.07 ghz
evga gtx 970 SSC
1TB WD Caviar Black HDD
60gb OCZ Vertex SSD
480gb SP SSD
Rosewill 750W
Motherboard: MSI X58M
3x4gb xms corsair ram
2x8gb patriot viper ram
total: 28GB

Now my question, according to : http://www.pc-specs.com/mobo/MSI/MSI_X58M/2833

My Motherboard only accommodate 24Gb of ram but i have 28 Gb and it's showing alright under

windows>computer>Properties i mean it says (Installed Memory RAM : 28 Gb) what happen to my

extra RAM??Will it get used ? crash the whole thing ?? cause according to the MoBo specs it

wont use more than 24Gb On the other hand it's wrote on the MoBo itself DDR3 OPI up to 25.6 GB/s

but if not used I could use 1 x 4Gb XMS 3 on my gf computer to upgrade her to 12 Gb.

Thanks in advande for your answers

have a good one!

joex444 · Sep 12, 2016

The memory controller is on the CPU, so the memory limit isn't coming from the motherboard. Here's the data sheet on the Intel i7 950:

http://ark.intel.com/products/37150/Intel-Core-i7-950-Processor-8M-Cache-3_06-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI

As you can see the memory limit from the CPU is 24GB. I'm actually a little surprised it registers the 28GB as it appears it should not. Perhaps there is a hard cutoff and it won't use more than 24GB despite detecting 28GB.

I would suggest you pull one the Corsair 4GB modules and run your system with the 4 modules. Tricky part here is IIRC the i7-950 is an LGA1366 CPU which had 3 channel memory on the X58 chipset. So you actually want 3x8GB -- it may be best to have channel A be an 8GB, B be an 8GB, and C be 2x4GB. This is almost surely why you had 3x4GB to start with and you recently added the 2x8GB, correct?

Try that out... it's almost certainly more fair for you to have 24GB while she has 12GB than it is for you to have 28GB while she has 8GB.

techgeek · Sep 12, 2016

That is odd, according to your motherboard manual it shouldn't work with a DIMM larger than 4GB DIMMs. So if you had all the slots populated, that would mean that you would have at least 1 8GB DIMM.

If Windows sees it, then the BIOS most certainly sees it. Therefore Windows should be able to access and use it. The limitation is more of a hardware limitation not a software limitation. The IMC on the CPU shouldn't be able to address more than 24GB.

Ducu27 · Sep 12, 2016

Just to be sure here's how i placed my ram in the 3 channels A:4+8 B:4+8 c:4-0 you want me to change it for A:8-0 B:8-0 C:4+4 for a total of 8 gb on each channel ?

Tradesman1 · Sep 12, 2016

Some X58 mobos have been known to accept 8GB sticks and some use all 8GB of them, have seen where some accept them and only use 4 of the 8GB, so can't really give a definitive answer, I stick with mobo specs and only recommend using 4GB sticks. Sorry not more, but no real way to know

techgeek · Sep 12, 2016

Tradesman1 :

The issue is that with since Nehelam, the IMC is on the CPU and the i7 950 clearly states that it can only address 24GB of RAM. It should have very little to do with the motherboard itself. I find it odd myself as its obvious that from the OP's post that Windows and thus the platform is able to see and use more than 24GB.

Tradesman1 · Sep 12, 2016

They can 'see' what is there (if the BIOS can 'see' it whether they can 'use' it is also on the BIOS. 1366 was back when they were making DRAM with low density memory ICs, and most all 8GB sticks use high density which also plays in.

techgeek · Sep 12, 2016

Well technically the address space is 36 bit, so technically it could address as much as 64GB. That said I did some snooping on the internet and I found one guy who had 48GB working with his X58 (with i7 980) platform. According to his "blog" some motherboards appear to work with more than the limit of 24GB and other don't. With the others that fall into the "don't" category, some refused to POST and others just didn't see anything beyond 24GB. So it seems like it maybe firmware dependent.

Tradesman1 · Sep 12, 2016

Yep, as said all depends on the BIOS

Ducu27 · Sep 12, 2016

Thanks for all replies guys it , but since i have an old setup and i don't want to push my luck i did follow joex444 advice to optimize each channel to a max of 8Gb and it work just fine atm

+ I already bought my gf the same 970 ssc that i have and the 750 gold rosewill psu this year so she will be more than happpy to go from 8gb to 12 gb for free

Have a nice day guys !

Ducu27 · Sep 12, 2016

Just opened my bios setting and saw the 2x 4Gb corsair xms 3 1.333 mhz max and the two separate 8Gb Patriot Viper 1.600mhz max bandwidth

and tested it out for you guys to see if it go over 8Gb ram used. opened most of programs i own playing videos on vlc and on youtube while

listening music playing ark evolve at high settings and WoW + other programs and it went over the 8Gb mark so it mean it really use the new

memory

without a notch of lag photo for curious

http://imgur.com/a/5CZny
http://imgur.com/a/Z0icr

Ducu27 · Sep 13, 2016

Heya there performed a last stress test using 2 x 8 gb stick to see if it would use more than the 4gb DIMM ( supposed )limit and it did went up to 9.52 gb used and still had 6.5gb on standby witch as long as I know is Memory that that could be used if need so it's a neat proof that it use more than the 4gb per slot ( ouf ! ) so i will put the 2 x4gb back in and enjoy my 24gb RAM

https://postimg.org/image/pk94g39hx/

~ Thanks for all replies guys

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