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Hi all,

I just upgraded my wife's aging PC to a AMD Ryzen 5 1600X with a MSI X370 Gaming Plus motherboard and 16GB (8GB x 2) DDR4 3000MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX memory. The upgrade process went smoothly and everything posted fine on the first boot up. I then updated the BIOS to the latest version from MSI's website. After it booted back up, I started to mess with the RAM settings when I noticed something odd. Both of the RAM sticks are recognized by the BIOS but only half of the capacity is adding up to the stated total. Here is a screenshot from the BIOS so you can see what I mean.

Has anyone experienced this before? So far I have been unable to find a similar situation in my searches. Is there anything that you would recommend that I try?

My plan is to try to install Windows and see if CPU-Z or similar can see both modules. I've never experienced this behavior before. Most of times that I have had bad memory, the system won't POST with it installed or it doesn't show up at all in BIOS so I am quite confused by this situation. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Interesting, because this appears to be a firmware issue, not hardware.

Nevertheless, have you tried the usual shenanigans while troubleshooting memory installation issues? Reseat the RAM, swap the sticks, use the other 2 slots, use mismatched slots, use one stick at a time, etc.? What has been the difference in behaviour, and the RAM readings reported?

Edit: And on a lighter note, congratulations on getting your RAM running in a RAID-1 setup

Was the RAM fully recognized on the older BIOS? Why not just roll back?

Did you reset the CMOS settings after the BIOS flash?

I have had this issue a couple of times, but in my experience it was down to bad memory (which is probably not the case here). I had a Corsair Dominator 4x4GB kit on my MSI X370 SLI PLUS mobo that would recognise all four sticks, but only come up as 8GB in the total. The system wouldn't boot every other time, though. Eventually After logging into Windows, it would appear in Task Manager that 8GB was "Hardware reserved". :/

I sent the kit back to Corsair and they replaced it so it must've been faulty. To be honest I've had so many issues with Corsair DDR4 (bad luck I guess). :/

Thank you for all of the helpful feedback!

Last night, I tried all of the usual tricks to diagnose memory issues (re-seating them, swapping stick locations, changing channels, mismatched slots, etc). Since each time I had to move the memory, I had to remove the CPU heatsink (the PC case is tiny), I was getting quite frustrated at this point and I was worried I was going to run out of TIM, I threw in the towel and went to bed. I left the power cable unplugged since I knew I would be working on the system again today.

I booted up the system today and all 16GB of memory is recognized. I installed Windows 10 and drivers and, so far, everything is working great. I really don't know why it changed overnight, unless there was something that reset while it was left unplugged for an extended period of time.

Wren wrote:

To be honest I've had so many issues with Corsair DDR4 (bad luck I guess). :/

My current kit, a 2x16GB DDR4-3000 pair, wouldn't run stable at XMP settings- quick advance RMA to Corsair, now running good.

Like Evga, their warranties are part of their appeal.

I had a few minutes today to adjust the RAM timings. I was able to get 2933MHz at 16-18-18-18-36-2T without a problem. I had tried to change the timings before all of the memory was recognized and nothing beyond the default 2133MHz would boot properly. Hopefully I can tighten the timings a bit more but it's been a nice upgrade over her old FX-8350. It's been really nice that the fans don't have to run nearly as quickly to keep the system cool, even in a small case. The case is a Cooler Master Elite 360 and it barely has enough space. The top of the Noctua NH-C14 is within 4mm of the side wall and only the bottom fan is installed on the heatsink. But with just that fan and a top mounted 120mm fan, max CPU and GPU temps during stress tests have been in the low 60's °C.

EDIT: Added the note that the temps were under stress tests.