8GB of ram installed but only 3.98 usable OS 64 bit win7

[InsaneGenius]

Hi everyone I've ran into a problem, my pc is saying only 3.98GB of ram is usable but I have 8GB installed and it's a 64 bit OS what could be the problem? I'm not using onboard graphics so it can't be sharing the other 4GB with that, a pcie card is installed and being used.

MB: asrock n68vs3 fx
CPU: AMD FX6300
RAM: 8GB
Graphics: 1GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

 

[vesp3r]

open start menu and type msinfo32
see there how much ram is installed and how much is available/usable
If under installed ram it sais less then 8GB then either your mobo doesnt support more than 4gb or the stick is incompatible/faulty

NOTE: Installed RAM IS NOT the same as Usable RAM

Still 4GB used on win 7 is suspicious. See what processes are you running and try to clean them to free memory. It shouldnt use more than 2GB on idle (atleast my doesnt)

UPDATE: this is what i found about your mobo:
- Dual Channel DDR3 memory technology
- 2 x DDR3 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR3 1600/1333/1066/800 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 16GB*

 

[InsaneGenius]

very odd I turned on the pc to check this website and now it says; Installed ram 8GB now even task manager shows, its got a higher graph when only 4GB was usable I was using about 3GB and the graph was at 75-ish% now using 3GB the graph is around 40-ish% no idea why or how it was fixed the only difference in change was the pc booted but blank screen i waited half an hour then just press the reset button and now it's all good :/ maybe that long blank screen it was checking the ram?

 

[vesp3r]

It could be that BIOS did not recognized your RAM 1st time... keep a track if it goes back to 4GB again... it could be that either the slot or the stick have problem