Alright folks, here's a doozy (Kept me up till 1:30 this morning and not fixed)

[Krenian]

As amusing as this would be, I would rather not buy a new mobo considering I do have a certain huge event coming up come July.

[Fetzie]

I'm sure your fiancée would understand the need to spend over 100 bucks on a motherboard for a 3 year old socket that you probably can only source from Ebay nowadays

[Reev]

You need your old motherboard for "something old?" Get the new motherboard for "something new!" You're on your own for something borrowed and something blue.

[Fetzie]

Asus motherboards are blue.

[Reev]

Asus motherboards are blue.

Woot! Now what can he borrow?

[Fetzie]

The sledgehammer? And keep it next to the computer as a perpetual warning, like the Sword of Damocles.

[truculent]

Hmmmm.... Try hitting the motherboard with a sledgehammer, then buying one that works?

/thread

[Reev]

The sledgehammer? And keep it next to the computer as a perpetual warning, like the Sword of Damocles.

Haha, Sword of Damocles! +1

I totally want to hang a sledgehammer on my wall over my computer now.

[Leucifer]

Doesn't dual/tri/quad channel only change the rate of access to memory, not the amount of memory used? So three sticks, two (4GB each) in dual channel and one (4GB) in single channel would be 12GB, running in single channel.

Yeah. You're right. Hm.......

Asus motherboards are blue.

Not true......

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131665

Hmmmm.... Try hitting the motherboard with a sledgehammer, then buying one that works?

The sledgehammer? And keep it next to the computer as a perpetual warning, like the Sword of Damocles.

^ This........

Looking at everything else you've tried.... I'm thinking either need to flash/reset the BIOS, hope this fixes the problem, or bin the board.

[Fetzie]

Looking at everything else you've tried.... I'm thinking either need to flash/reset the BIOS, hope this fixes the problem, or bin the board.

Or live with it and make do.

[Fetzie]

Or it is the memory controller on the CPU. Remember you had that problem with the thermal paste a while back? While you had those obscenely high temperatures something in the CPU could have gotten bust.

[Slyvar]

Or, with all the pulling in and out of CPU and heatsink, it is quite possible a bent pin happened. I'd say about 90% of the time, misreported memory sizes are bent CPU pins.

Also a reported temp of 65C isn't obscenely high on an i3/5 (This is the temp I remember Kren talking about in the shoutbox). The Sandy Bridge CPU's hit the "danger zone" at 90C. So, unless you were hitting temps of around 90C-100C sustained, I really doubt the heat damaged the CPU. Mind you, it's not impossible, but improbable.

(The downside is, with all the pins in those sockets, it is very difficult to spot an actual bent one.)

[Fetzie]

I thought he was talking about an idle temperature of 65°C, not a load temperature.

[Seanjones80]

Which version of win 7? Some of the basic versions have RAM capped

Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk

[Fetzie]

Which version of win 7? Some of the basic versions have RAM capped

Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk

The only versions of Windows 7 that you can buy in the USA, Canada and Europe are Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate, and they all support at least 16GB of RAM. We already cleared Windows of being the culprit.

[Slyvar]

I thought he was talking about an idle temperature of 65°C, not a load temperature.

That very well could be. :P

[leethaxor]

I would try to flash your bios. It sounds like a problem with your bridges.

You mentioned that changes happen with your overclock. When you over clock your cpu you normally also ramp up the speed at which the bridges feed information into your cpu. As the bridge is providing the link between your ram and cpu (and you cpu obviously isn't broken). I would look at that since you have verified each stick has worked.

The bridge is managed by the bios, I don't think you can really run a diagnosis on it, but you can flash your bios and just re-install it.

And that's what I would do. It sounds like a strange problem with the bios.

[Krenian]

Flashing the BIOS did nothing. Just FYI.

[Leucifer]

Well crap....

You've eliminated a lot of possibilities. Looking back.... a couple questions....

I have 12 gigs of ram (I can have 16 but I am seriously thinking that the mem slot is actually doing shorts and is shutting down my pc anytime I game hardcore.)

So, you were having problems with one of the slots as it was? What was it doing before? How was it behaving previously? BSOD? Random shutdown? This might give us some ideas as to what the issue is.

Seen it, still doesn't fix anything. Was one of the first ones. But it just started doing this; I had 16 gigs free before. Why, all of a sudden, with this ram, do I have problems.

What kind of RAM chipsets are these? Are all 3 different? What's different about what you're trying to use now compared to previously?

By the way, what voltages are you running these at? DDR3 is set to run between 1.5V to 1.65V. Pushing it beyond that can cause problems, and there was mention that you were overclocking.

I just find it strange that the BIOS and Windows is seeing all 3 sticks, but is reserving some for hardware. What is it saying is "occupying" that memory?

Check this when you get a chance.... you'll see what I mean. http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspx

He talks about memory remapping.

[Krenian]

Problems - Playing intensive games, the rig shuts down. Just outright shuts down. My synopsis is that now that I've taken the stick out of the slot, it's no longer giving me any problems so the ram slot must be shorting at some point during the processes and just shuts the PC down to make sure it doesn't overload the mobo.

I had 8 gigs of ram before. Same company (Corsair). I got a deal for 16 gigs for Corsair ram, 1600, and 4 sticks. We're running it at 1.5 for safety measures; I've upped it to 1.65 but it still does nothing.

That's the thing; I have NO idea what is occupying the memory; there's nothing that I can do to see it.

Also, already checked the memory remapping tool, and it's already enabled on my mobo.