Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 Rev 1.1 only sees half of memory

[Jojoba Plant]

Hello all!

A little while back I had a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 (REV 1.0) motherboard with one faulty RAM-slot. RMA'ed it and received a new replacement, the REV 1.1.

I had 4 sticks of 4GB RAM @1600 (Geil Dragon RAM 2 kits -GD38GB1600C11DC, 1 from week 1-2012 and the other from week 40-2012, CL 11-11-11-28) But the Bios only saw 8175 MB @1333 and Windows saw 12GB, of which 7.98 was usable. This was with all the clock and timing-settings correct and according to specs.

But this RAM did not appear on the QVL for this board, so I bought a new set of RAM, thinking this would solve the issue:

I bought a 16 GB kit from G-SKILL which was tested on this particular board and popped up when I did a search for compatible RAM.

This is a kit of 4 x 4 GB RAM @1600 (G-SKILL ARES F31600C9Q, CL 9-9-9-24), but alas, same issue - Bios only sees 8175 RAM and in Bios gave basically the settings of the old RAM - 11-11-11-28, however it did see that it was @1600. Switched CL to the correct ones given by G-SKILL, but to no avail.

Things I did:

- Reseated sticks around in all of the slots (no success)
- Booted with just one stick (all sticks are functioning just fine)
- Reseated CPU and check for bent pins, switched CPU as well (no bad pins and no success)
- Updated Bios, first to F11 and then to F12A (both no improvement)
- upped the voltage a little (no success)
- Switched off Turbo/CPB core boost (no success)
- Changed NB freq to 2400 as well as HT to 2400, upped NB voltage slightly (comp did not boot - however in safe mode it showed me 16 GB, but now it won't even boot in safe mode with these settings)
- Set EOCP to Profile 1 and corrected manually NB and HT to Auto, CL times were correct (no success)

So you see, the nuber of things I have done/tried is quite extensive and still there is no result...I am just about had it with Gigabyte as I am ALWAYS having probs with the memory or memory related stuff in the many years that I buy Gigabyte. This one will be the last one - too bad, always been a Gigabyte fan, but it's causing too much headaches. In the time that this one was RMA'ed I had temporarily an MSI 970A-G46 installed with the same aforementioned Geil memory sticks and they worked like a charm, all 16GB of it.

Anybody has any other options for me to try?

Here is my system:

MoBo: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5
CPU: AMD FX 6200 (CPU Cooler: Coolermaster V8)
RAM: 16 GB G-SKILL ARES @1600
ATI HD Radeon 4650 x 2 (to be replaced soon)
SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic (to be replaced soon)
Hard Drives:
1 OCZ SSD Agility 60 GB (SATA3)
1 Kingston SSD V300 120 GB(SATA3)
1 Seagate 500 GB (SATA 2)
2 Samsung 500 GB (SATA2)
2 optical drives (DVD Rom and DVDRW - both SATA2)

PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 750Watt

Case: Coolermaster HAF932

Thank you very much for your help 
 

[Jojoba Plant]

So this is again a problem that nobody can fix - nothing new from Gigabyte's support. They never seem to be able or willing to help me fix the issues that I have. Kinda disappointing from a firm which I have been buying products of for about the last decade....

So in short - Bios F9, F11 and F12a all see 8175 MB Ram @1600 installed while 16GB @1600 is installed. See previous post on what I already tried and also see the specs that I have.

Additionally I can add that I tried to run it @1333, with no success. Both Memory Kits produce the same - half of the memory is displayed and CPU-Z and a range of other system analysers all see 16GB installed.

Any other suggestions are welcome as I do not feel like RMA'ing this mobo again - I RMA'ed it already for another ailment.

*Edit: I run Windows 8 Professional 64 bit. Same prob already occurred on Win7 Ultimate 64 bit as well

[absic]

Have you considered that the CPU may be faulty as the memory controller is part of this? I have read, on the internet, of some instances where this has been the problem.

Have you tried clearing CMOS for an extended period, rather than just shorting the pins? Sounds stupid but this can sometimes help.

Have you run MemTest to make sure that the RAM is OK on this system? Even new modules can be faulty and this shouldn't be excluded from any testing you are doing.

[Jojoba Plant]

I have thought about the cpu being faulty, but then again - I did test it with another proc that I have, which did work in combi with the aforementioned MSI 970A G46 and showed the same behaviour on this board.

I will take out the battery (I presume that is what you meant by clearing the CMOS for an extended period of time) and see what results this will yield. If that does not fix it, I will, like I said before, run memtest on all four sticks for one night long and see what that delivers. And if that does not give me a clue, ah well, I can always try my luck at RMA'ing the CPU.

Thank you very much for your reply

[Jojoba Plant]

Took the battery out for 10-15 mins, but no result. Mc is giving me a hard time booting from the usb stick, so I was not yet able to run memtest tonight, but I will figure that out and post results here. Thanks!

[Jojoba Plant]

Memtest ran the whole night, recognizing all 16 Gigs and reporting no errors, so I guess I will RMA either proc or mobo or even both - my reseller will not be happy with me as this is the second time this year that I will be returning stuff. Amazing that just happen to have the luck of buying a faulty mobo and a faulty proc and getting one faulty mobo replaces with another probably faulty mobo. Does take some special talents, I guess.

Thanks for your answer anyway.

[Jojoba Plant]

Just want you guys to know that the problem now has been fixed. Before I wanted to RMA sth, I decided to re-reseat my cpu again and for some weird reason it seems to be working now - memory is shown correctly and it all now works like a charm. Strange that it did not work the first time I reseated it and with the other one I put in. Ah heck, it doesn't matter now, it works. Thanks!

[8 Pack]

I have seen this before. Its probably not the reseating of the CPU which fixed the problem here but the reseating f the heatsink. An over tightened or heat sink which is applying uneven pressure causes warping of the tracks on the board and memory detection errors.

Glade your sorted!!!