Hello all,
I'm new to the community, but have been dabbling with computer hardware for the entirety of my life. In the last year, I picked up the perfect desktop for tinkering, and have been doing just that. It's an older machine, with a questionable past, but the specs are as follows:
Motherboard: EVGA X58 Classified
CPU: Xeon W3690 (3.47ghz stock, currently OCed to 4.2ghz stable), air cooled with Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition cooler
GPU: Nvidia RTX 2080
RAM: 40gb Team Elite Plus 1333, 8gb x4 and 4gb x 2 DIMMs (OCed to 1403mhz at 1.55v)
OS: Windows 10 Pro
Power supply: Ultra X4, 1050W
Case: Cooler Master HAF 952
On to my issue: This PC came to me without the Xeon chip, the 2080, and the two 4gb sticks of RAM. Those components I added myself. The motherboard also required a bit of physical modification for the processor to interface with it, in the form of soldering jumper pads on the board in two locations (done with a professional soldering station in a shop I worked for). I ordered the 4gb RAM sticks after installing the Xeon, as the system only ever reported 16gb of RAM from the existing 4 sticks, even with the old i7 920 CPU installed. The goal was a total of 24gb, which with those sticks installed, the PC recognized that quantity.
Fast forward to this past weekend, and I decided to do some overclocking with the goal being an improvement on performace for CAD and 3D modeling work. While slowly increasing values and trying different things to stabilize my overclock, I happened to notice in CPU-Z that the reported amount of RAM was 40gb. More oddly, when I looked at the system about page in Windows settings, it reported only 8gb at that time. Thinking I knocked one or more sticks loose while tinkering inside the case, I shutdown, pulled all the RAM and reinserted it, at that time finding that the majority of the sticks were 8gb and not 4gb as I had thought. When reseated and the pc rebooted, the system then reported 32gb or available RAM. Trying again, following the motherboard manual's slot ordering scheme as a guide, I reordered the sticks in hopes that it would recognize all 40gb of RAM. After several attempts, the during which the amount of ram present varied from 16 to 28gb, I could never get all of it recognizable to Windows, nor could I get it back to 32gb as it once identified.
I was finally able to get the RAM capacity to stay stable back at 24gb and left it alone at that point. In doing some reading, the W3690 is listed as only supporting 24gb of RAM anyway, though I hear some people have gotten it to work with more. Oddly, I only get 24gb recognized with all 6 sticks installed. Trying 3x 8gb sticks yeilds only 16gb of RAM, as does having all four 8gb stick installed. This doesn't seem to be a symptom of bad overclocking, as the amount of RAM has always reported at 24gb or less even when set to stock settings.
So questions I have are:
- Being triple channel, is the mixing of 4 and 8 gb DIMMs causing issues with the memory controller? I had thought that the mismatch would cause the memory controller to operate in dual channel mode, and everything would be fine.
- Could this be a processor issue? The memory controller is built into the processor, I wonder if it has a problem? I'm also considering a lateral upgrade to a X5690 instead that will host way more memory, including ECC RAM. Is that an OK idea?
- is there a setting somewhere in the Bios I'm not seeing or setting right? I've tried everything in an think of, but I defer to the experts.
- If CPU-Z sees the full RAM amount, despite what Windows thinks, is the total quantity of RAM allocatable to other software, or am I limited to what Windows can see?
- Any other thoughts?
Sorry for being so long winded, however I felt the more detail I give, the better understand you all might have. Thanks for any and all help you can give.
I'm new to the community, but have been dabbling with computer hardware for the entirety of my life. In the last year, I picked up the perfect desktop for tinkering, and have been doing just that. It's an older machine, with a questionable past, but the specs are as follows:
Motherboard: EVGA X58 Classified
CPU: Xeon W3690 (3.47ghz stock, currently OCed to 4.2ghz stable), air cooled with Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition cooler
GPU: Nvidia RTX 2080
RAM: 40gb Team Elite Plus 1333, 8gb x4 and 4gb x 2 DIMMs (OCed to 1403mhz at 1.55v)
OS: Windows 10 Pro
Power supply: Ultra X4, 1050W
Case: Cooler Master HAF 952
On to my issue: This PC came to me without the Xeon chip, the 2080, and the two 4gb sticks of RAM. Those components I added myself. The motherboard also required a bit of physical modification for the processor to interface with it, in the form of soldering jumper pads on the board in two locations (done with a professional soldering station in a shop I worked for). I ordered the 4gb RAM sticks after installing the Xeon, as the system only ever reported 16gb of RAM from the existing 4 sticks, even with the old i7 920 CPU installed. The goal was a total of 24gb, which with those sticks installed, the PC recognized that quantity.
Fast forward to this past weekend, and I decided to do some overclocking with the goal being an improvement on performace for CAD and 3D modeling work. While slowly increasing values and trying different things to stabilize my overclock, I happened to notice in CPU-Z that the reported amount of RAM was 40gb. More oddly, when I looked at the system about page in Windows settings, it reported only 8gb at that time. Thinking I knocked one or more sticks loose while tinkering inside the case, I shutdown, pulled all the RAM and reinserted it, at that time finding that the majority of the sticks were 8gb and not 4gb as I had thought. When reseated and the pc rebooted, the system then reported 32gb or available RAM. Trying again, following the motherboard manual's slot ordering scheme as a guide, I reordered the sticks in hopes that it would recognize all 40gb of RAM. After several attempts, the during which the amount of ram present varied from 16 to 28gb, I could never get all of it recognizable to Windows, nor could I get it back to 32gb as it once identified.
I was finally able to get the RAM capacity to stay stable back at 24gb and left it alone at that point. In doing some reading, the W3690 is listed as only supporting 24gb of RAM anyway, though I hear some people have gotten it to work with more. Oddly, I only get 24gb recognized with all 6 sticks installed. Trying 3x 8gb sticks yeilds only 16gb of RAM, as does having all four 8gb stick installed. This doesn't seem to be a symptom of bad overclocking, as the amount of RAM has always reported at 24gb or less even when set to stock settings.
So questions I have are:
- Being triple channel, is the mixing of 4 and 8 gb DIMMs causing issues with the memory controller? I had thought that the mismatch would cause the memory controller to operate in dual channel mode, and everything would be fine.
- Could this be a processor issue? The memory controller is built into the processor, I wonder if it has a problem? I'm also considering a lateral upgrade to a X5690 instead that will host way more memory, including ECC RAM. Is that an OK idea?
- is there a setting somewhere in the Bios I'm not seeing or setting right? I've tried everything in an think of, but I defer to the experts.
- If CPU-Z sees the full RAM amount, despite what Windows thinks, is the total quantity of RAM allocatable to other software, or am I limited to what Windows can see?
- Any other thoughts?
Sorry for being so long winded, however I felt the more detail I give, the better understand you all might have. Thanks for any and all help you can give.
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