32GB recognized.... 11 usable?????

[brisa117]

So I just threw a new 32GB G.Skill Ripjaws Z DDR3-1866 kit into my system. Everything works wonderfully....... but the total amount of RAM isn't "usable".

Windows says 32GB (11GB usable). This is especially weird because I just upgraded from 12GB which was fully recognized.

System:

CPU: Phenom II 955
MOBO: Asus Sabertooth 990FX
RAM: 32GB G.Skill Ripjaws Z DDR3-1866 (4x8GB)
HDD: OCZ Agility 3 120GB
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
Graphics card: Radeon HD 4890

This is beyond puzzling... when I Googled the problem, I kept running into people who bought 32GB kits and only had Win7 HP (which apparently has a limit of 16GB), but Win7 Ultimate has a cap of 192GB. Sigh.

 

[brisa117]

... so for anyone who's interested, I figured it out on my own. APPARENTLY under msconfig, the "Max Ram" setting was checked and set to 0.... not quite sure how 0 translated into 11GB, but at least my computer booted. Haha. Anyways, I simply unchecked that and restarted, now all 32 damn gigabytes are available for my enjoyment!

 

[Majestic One]

yeah, brisa117 is right about the MAX MEM thing... hit him up i guess. (should post solution (YH link) here or another [which i found MANY] here)

 

[ThatsMyNameDude]

Hey dude. You have got a new motherboard And a high end windows os. Why do you want to go with a low end gpu and cpu? If you bought the ram for produceing, you should get a better cpu. Anyways thats some pretty sweet ram

 

[brisa117]

Hey dude. You have got a new motherboard And a high end windows os. Why do you want to go with a low end gpu and cpu? If you bought the ram for produceing, you should get a better cpu. Anyways thats some pretty sweet ram

Haha. I know, I know. I've been gradually upgrading my system since I first built it in May 2009. At the time my Phenom II 955be cost me... I think about $235 and was THE top end that AMD offered. Of course a few days later they released the 965... and so on. Anyways, I reallllllly do need to upgrade my CPU and GPU.

I purchased the new motherboard (awesome board BTW, increased my CPU overclock potential) so I could have some SATA III ports for SSDs and eventually get a Bulldozer CPU (which disappointed me) but now a piledriver/Zambezi CPU.

The CPU is getting upgraded to the FX-8350 here in about a month when I get paid again and I am hoping to upgrade my graphics card around the holidays. The thing that's been holding me back on the graphics card is the waterblock... I though about upgrading last year... and earlier this year... but I keep telling myself that I'll have to add $100 to whatever price I pay to get the performance/noise level that I like. I'm thinking I will pick up a GTX 670 because they play nice with Adobe products and they're not totally unreasonable. With a waterblock I think it will cost me about $450-$500.

I mostly wanted the ram (and subsequently the new FX-8350) because I do alot of video editing in Premiere Pro and After Effects... so I'm very satisfied. I love new tech, and my friends love the hand-me-down free 8GB of RAM.

I know... I'm spoiled.