I assume it will be, but even if it is it won't be using 8GB of ram! On 5/2/13, Isaac wrote:

is your video card onboard ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Mehler" To: "blind-sysadmins" Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2013 10:53 AM Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] ram not right

...

Hello Everyone,

I've got a new machine and I maxed out it's ram. The board can take 32 GB of ram and that's what it has. It's running win7 professional 64 bit, (I checked Microsoft and that can take 192 GB of ram), and it's not showing ram right.

In system information I'm seeing total physical ram 24 gb, a full 8 short, usable physical ram 16 GB, and available when I look is 14.7 GB. I don't think these numbers are right.

The board is a gigabyte GA970-d3 rev 1.4. I believe it's dual channel. I took out the ram chips in pairs so instead of four the system had two, numbers were still not right, got 12 gb of total ram instead of 16.

The ram is g.skill 1866 clockspeed I believe but in the bios that's only at 1333. I can't believe I've got four bad chips, or since this came in two separate orders one bad chip per order. I'm now wondering if it's a timing issue, if the ram can't clock down from 1866 to 1333 usually in my experience hardware can clock down one level but not two.

I'm going to try a grml 64 USB disk when I return later today see what that shows, and I read it had a ram tester I'll give that a go.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks. Dave.

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Hi, I've included the reply I posted when you asked this question in January; perhaps you missed it. First things first regarding the ram, if you feel the clips that hold the ram in place - one each side of the stick, are they all flush with eachother? Assuming you're working with 4X 8GB sticks, the 2 sets of 4 clips should all be flush with eachother - if not, one of them isn't installed correctly and you should reinstall it before powering the machine on again. Failing that, the only way I see for you to progress is to take a stick out, boot, record the amount of ram shown and then do the same until you find which one is faulty. For example, if you currently see 24GB of ram and you take 1X 8GB stick out and still see 24GB of ram, you've found the faulty stick / slot. You could confirm this by swapping a stick into the suspect slot and seeing what happens. For example: slots 1, 2, 3, 4 are populated but you only see 24GB. Slots 1, 2, 3 are populated and you only see 24GB. Slots 1, 2, 4 are populated (Slot 4 containing the dim previously installed in slot 3) but you only see 16GB. In this situation slot 4 is faulty. If you see 24GB, you have a faulty dim. Cheers, Ben. On 5/2/13, Ben Mustill-Rose wrote:

I assume it will be, but even if it is it won't be using 8GB of ram!

On 5/2/13, Isaac wrote:

...

is your video card onboard ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Mehler" To: "blind-sysadmins" Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2013 10:53 AM Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] ram not right

...

Hello Everyone,

I've got a new machine and I maxed out it's ram. The board can take 32 GB of ram and that's what it has. It's running win7 professional 64 bit, (I checked Microsoft and that can take 192 GB of ram), and it's not showing ram right.

In system information I'm seeing total physical ram 24 gb, a full 8 short, usable physical ram 16 GB, and available when I look is 14.7 GB. I don't think these numbers are right.

The board is a gigabyte GA970-d3 rev 1.4. I believe it's dual channel. I took out the ram chips in pairs so instead of four the system had two, numbers were still not right, got 12 gb of total ram instead of 16.

The ram is g.skill 1866 clockspeed I believe but in the bios that's only at 1333. I can't believe I've got four bad chips, or since this came in two separate orders one bad chip per order. I'm now wondering if it's a timing issue, if the ram can't clock down from 1866 to 1333 usually in my experience hardware can clock down one level but not two.

I'm going to try a grml 64 USB disk when I return later today see what that shows, and I read it had a ram tester I'll give that a go.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks. Dave.

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Hello, Thank you everyone for your replies. Ok, first of all I've got four banks of slots for ram. They are all from the same manufacture, same speed, and same size, I just ordered them in two separate orders. I'm going to get a pair of eyes on them today and give me a chip by chip check to confirm this. I do not have onboard video, my motherboard did not come with it so I've had to use an expansion card. Ben, thanks I did not get your reply, but I'll answer it here. I've removed and replaced each ram chip and the clips are indeed all aligned correctly, the ram is in. I did as I said remove and check the ram count, I've got dual channel so I thought i'd h ave to have the ram in in pairs, which I did during the testing, the numbers were all the same, as I said I can't believe I've got one to two bad chips one per order. Processors, I've got an AMD fx8120 8 core processor in the system. I've checked out the specs, and my motherboard is the rev 1.4. The fx8120 processor is supported as is 1866 mhz ddr3. As for slots, I've got all of them filled though thanks for the info on colors, I didn't throw a color identifier in the box. Specific processor? I hope I didn't make a mistake in the processor vs. the ram, otherwise I'll be having some hardware to part with. Thanks for the info on grml, I've actually got grml 2012.05, I'm going to give that a try, but any information you can give me on it about all I know is to test /proc/meminfo and see what it says, and it's been a while. Thanks again for all the suggestions. Dave. On 5/3/13, John G. Heim wrote:

If it was my machine, I would see what linux said. If you are interested, I can tell you how to do that. There is an accessible live linux distro called grml (pronounced "gremel"). See www.grml.org. We at the UW Math Dept are a mirror so you can download the ISO file at http://dl.math.wisc.edu/grml/

I gave you the the directory name so you could get to the checksums if you want to. A link to the latest iso itself is:

http://dl.math.wisc.edu/grml/grml64-full_2013.02.iso

On 05/02/13 10:53, David Mehler wrote:

...

Hello Everyone,

I've got a new machine and I maxed out it's ram. The board can take 32 GB of ram and that's what it has. It's running win7 professional 64 bit, (I checked Microsoft and that can take 192 GB of ram), and it's not showing ram right.

In system information I'm seeing total physical ram 24 gb, a full 8 short, usable physical ram 16 GB, and available when I look is 14.7 GB. I don't think these numbers are right.

The board is a gigabyte GA970-d3 rev 1.4. I believe it's dual channel. I took out the ram chips in pairs so instead of four the system had two, numbers were still not right, got 12 gb of total ram instead of 16.

The ram is g.skill 1866 clockspeed I believe but in the bios that's only at 1333. I can't believe I've got four bad chips, or since this came in two separate orders one bad chip per order. I'm now wondering if it's a timing issue, if the ram can't clock down from 1866 to 1333 usually in my experience hardware can clock down one level but not two.

I'm going to try a grml 64 USB disk when I return later today see what that shows, and I read it had a ram tester I'll give that a go.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks. Dave.

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GRML, like many other live Linux CDs contains a memory tester in the boot menu/bootable from the boot prompt. If I recall correctly it's named Memtest86+. The only way to get accessible output from that unfortunately is to hook up a serial console. However, it's the reference memory test that I use when suspecting RAM because it runs very low level and can test all memory parts very thoroughly. If you have a beeper/PC speaker you can enable beeps on error, but then you'll not know which bank caused that error. So it's best to fire it off and have someone sighted have a look at the results after a few hours. Good luck, Bram On 3-5-2013 17:05, John G. Heim wrote:

Well, you pretty much got it for checking ram with grml. You could use the free command as well, "free -m" to show megs of ram and "free -g" to show gigs of ram. There is probably a mem testing program on the grml cd, something that writes to ram and sees if it can read it back. I can ask about it on the grml list if you'd like.

BTW, the accessability features of grml 2013 are the same as 2012. It will recognize braille displays w/o you doing anything. If you want to start speakup, you wait until its done booting (this will be indicated by a 3 tone tune), press q to exit the grml menu, and type two commands, "modprobe speakup_soft" and "espeakup". You may then have to increase the volume of the speakers with alsamixer. Type "alsamixer" and then just keep pressing the page up key until you get the volume where you want it.

On 05/03/13 09:40, David Mehler wrote:

...

Hello,

Thank you everyone for your replies.

Ok, first of all I've got four banks of slots for ram. They are all from the same manufacture, same speed, and same size, I just ordered them in two separate orders. I'm going to get a pair of eyes on them today and give me a chip by chip check to confirm this.

I do not have onboard video, my motherboard did not come with it so I've had to use an expansion card.

Ben, thanks I did not get your reply, but I'll answer it here. I've removed and replaced each ram chip and the clips are indeed all aligned correctly, the ram is in. I did as I said remove and check the ram count, I've got dual channel so I thought i'd h ave to have the ram in in pairs, which I did during the testing, the numbers were all the same, as I said I can't believe I've got one to two bad chips one per order.

Processors, I've got an AMD fx8120 8 core processor in the system.

I've checked out the specs, and my motherboard is the rev 1.4. The fx8120 processor is supported as is 1866 mhz ddr3. As for slots, I've got all of them filled though thanks for the info on colors, I didn't throw a color identifier in the box. Specific processor? I hope I didn't make a mistake in the processor vs. the ram, otherwise I'll be having some hardware to part with.

Thanks for the info on grml, I've actually got grml 2012.05, I'm going to give that a try, but any information you can give me on it about all I know is to test /proc/meminfo and see what it says, and it's been a while.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

Dave.

On 5/3/13, John G. Heim wrote:

...

If it was my machine, I would see what linux said. If you are interested, I can tell you how to do that. There is an accessible live linux distro called grml (pronounced "gremel"). See www.grml.org. We at the UW Math Dept are a mirror so you can download the ISO file at http://dl.math.wisc.edu/grml/

I gave you the the directory name so you could get to the checksums if you want to. A link to the latest iso itself is:

http://dl.math.wisc.edu/grml/grml64-full_2013.02.iso

On 05/02/13 10:53, David Mehler wrote:

...

Hello Everyone,

I've got a new machine and I maxed out it's ram. The board can take 32 GB of ram and that's what it has. It's running win7 professional 64 bit, (I checked Microsoft and that can take 192 GB of ram), and it's not showing ram right.

In system information I'm seeing total physical ram 24 gb, a full 8 short, usable physical ram 16 GB, and available when I look is 14.7 GB. I don't think these numbers are right.

The board is a gigabyte GA970-d3 rev 1.4. I believe it's dual channel. I took out the ram chips in pairs so instead of four the system had two, numbers were still not right, got 12 gb of total ram instead of 16.

The ram is g.skill 1866 clockspeed I believe but in the bios that's only at 1333. I can't believe I've got four bad chips, or since this came in two separate orders one bad chip per order. I'm now wondering if it's a timing issue, if the ram can't clock down from 1866 to 1333 usually in my experience hardware can clock down one level but not two.

I'm going to try a grml 64 USB disk when I return later today see what that shows, and I read it had a ram tester I'll give that a go.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks. Dave.

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Hi, Thanks. From reading I believe I'm dealing with a bios issue, something between dual channel, timing, and my type of ram 1866 mhz. I am still looking. Thanks. Dave. On 5/3/13, Bram Duvigneau wrote:

GRML, like many other live Linux CDs contains a memory tester in the boot menu/bootable from the boot prompt. If I recall correctly it's named Memtest86+. The only way to get accessible output from that unfortunately is to hook up a serial console. However, it's the reference memory test that I use when suspecting RAM because it runs very low level and can test all memory parts very thoroughly. If you have a beeper/PC speaker you can enable beeps on error, but then you'll not know which bank caused that error. So it's best to fire it off and have someone sighted have a look at the results after a few hours.

Good luck,

Bram On 3-5-2013 17:05, John G. Heim wrote:

...

Well, you pretty much got it for checking ram with grml. You could use the free command as well, "free -m" to show megs of ram and "free -g" to show gigs of ram. There is probably a mem testing program on the grml cd, something that writes to ram and sees if it can read it back. I can ask about it on the grml list if you'd like.

BTW, the accessability features of grml 2013 are the same as 2012. It will recognize braille displays w/o you doing anything. If you want to start speakup, you wait until its done booting (this will be indicated by a 3 tone tune), press q to exit the grml menu, and type two commands, "modprobe speakup_soft" and "espeakup". You may then have to increase the volume of the speakers with alsamixer. Type "alsamixer" and then just keep pressing the page up key until you get the volume where you want it.

On 05/03/13 09:40, David Mehler wrote:

...

Hello,

Thank you everyone for your replies.

Ok, first of all I've got four banks of slots for ram. They are all from the same manufacture, same speed, and same size, I just ordered them in two separate orders. I'm going to get a pair of eyes on them today and give me a chip by chip check to confirm this.

I do not have onboard video, my motherboard did not come with it so I've had to use an expansion card.

Ben, thanks I did not get your reply, but I'll answer it here. I've removed and replaced each ram chip and the clips are indeed all aligned correctly, the ram is in. I did as I said remove and check the ram count, I've got dual channel so I thought i'd h ave to have the ram in in pairs, which I did during the testing, the numbers were all the same, as I said I can't believe I've got one to two bad chips one per order.

Processors, I've got an AMD fx8120 8 core processor in the system.

I've checked out the specs, and my motherboard is the rev 1.4. The fx8120 processor is supported as is 1866 mhz ddr3. As for slots, I've got all of them filled though thanks for the info on colors, I didn't throw a color identifier in the box. Specific processor? I hope I didn't make a mistake in the processor vs. the ram, otherwise I'll be having some hardware to part with.

Thanks for the info on grml, I've actually got grml 2012.05, I'm going to give that a try, but any information you can give me on it about all I know is to test /proc/meminfo and see what it says, and it's been a while.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

Dave.

On 5/3/13, John G. Heim wrote:

...

If it was my machine, I would see what linux said. If you are interested, I can tell you how to do that. There is an accessible live linux distro called grml (pronounced "gremel"). See www.grml.org. We at the UW Math Dept are a mirror so you can download the ISO file at http://dl.math.wisc.edu/grml/

I gave you the the directory name so you could get to the checksums if you want to. A link to the latest iso itself is:

http://dl.math.wisc.edu/grml/grml64-full_2013.02.iso

On 05/02/13 10:53, David Mehler wrote:

...

Hello Everyone,

I've got a new machine and I maxed out it's ram. The board can take 32 GB of ram and that's what it has. It's running win7 professional 64 bit, (I checked Microsoft and that can take 192 GB of ram), and it's not showing ram right.

In system information I'm seeing total physical ram 24 gb, a full 8 short, usable physical ram 16 GB, and available when I look is 14.7 GB. I don't think these numbers are right.

The board is a gigabyte GA970-d3 rev 1.4. I believe it's dual channel. I took out the ram chips in pairs so instead of four the system had two, numbers were still not right, got 12 gb of total ram instead of 16.

The ram is g.skill 1866 clockspeed I believe but in the bios that's only at 1333. I can't believe I've got four bad chips, or since this came in two separate orders one bad chip per order. I'm now wondering if it's a timing issue, if the ram can't clock down from 1866 to 1333 usually in my experience hardware can clock down one level but not two.

I'm going to try a grml 64 USB disk when I return later today see what that shows, and I read it had a ram tester I'll give that a go.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks. Dave.

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Hi, The thing is, in the situations where less memory shows up because of the way that it was installed or because of a "feature" that the board has, you usually loos half the memory, not a quarter. For example, I have systems where I can have the full amount installed, or if I or someone else makes a change in the bios, I can half the amount but have it emulate faster memory. The coloring of slots is a good point which I forgot about. Essentially, the reason why this is done is so that people can make sure their memory is running in duel channel which is meant to combat a bottlenec between the CPU and the memory controlor. The important thing to remember here is that your eventual aim should be to have your 2 channels fully populated so that both channels are runing in duel channel. Lets assume that you have 3x 2gb sticks and 4 slots on a board, channel a having wite slots and channel b having blue slots. If we install 2x sticks in channel a and 1x in channel b, the 4gb in channel a will be running in duel channel mode because channel a is balanced - E.G. both slots are populated with dims of the same capacity. The 2gb in channel b will still function, but it will be running in single channel mode as the channel is only half populated. If we increased the total to 4x sticks, we would be able to fully populate both a and b, so at last, both channels would be running in duel channel mode. So, how do you make sure that you are installing your memory in such a way that it all runs in duel channel as a blind person: The easiest way is to populate all 4 slots. This is the approach that I usually take; I tend to go a bit overkill on the memory side because it's so cheap these days, so the problem of wanting to upgrade but having to throw out 2 dims instead of one won't be happening for me for a few years at least. Using this approach, it's simply not possible for the channels to be unbalanced, because you've filled every possible slot on your board. If this is not possible - E.G. you have 4 slots but not 4 sticks, the best approach depends on how many sticks you have. Assuming 2 sticks and 4 slots, the best setup would be to fully populate one of the channels and leave the other one empty, which begs the question of how to tell which slots belong to which channel: *Usually*, slot 1 and 3 will belong to a and slot 2 and 4 will belong to b. Note that your motherboard manual will probably define which slot is slot 1 or slot a, but that is of little importance; just install a dim in the slot nearest you, skip a slot then install the remaining dim and you will have most likely fully populated channel a or b. Getting back to the issue at hand after that rather long detour: You have some very good suggestions baring in mind how hard it is to troubleshoot hardware remotely. To completely rule out faulty hardware, take the time to install dim 1 in slot 1, dim 2 in slot 1, dim 3 in slot 1 etc. Make sure that you only have one dim in the system so that if a dim is faulty, the board simply won't post- in other words: every time windows lodes, you should see 8gb of ram. If all of the tests complete successfully, we can assume all the dims (I've used dims and sticks interchangeabley in this email) are working and that in this example, slot 1 is functional. You next need to take one of the dims and try it in slots 2, 3 and 4 and see what happens - since we've verified that all the dims are functional, from a hardware point of view, the only fault can now be a faulty slot. Assuming that the board doesn't post with a dim installed in a given slot then finally, you've diagnosed the fault. However, if all of the above tests pass then it is most likely a software issue and short of their being some sort of "feature" in your bios that is doing this, I'm stumped. In this situation I'd probably ask Gigabyte for help; it sounds like a new system, so the board should still be under warranty which means you should still be able to have free tech support. I hope all the above helped someone. Cheers, Ben. On 5/3/13, George Bell wrote:

David,

You say: "Processors, I've got an AMD fx8120 8 core processor in the system."

But the motherboard manufacturer says, "(Note 2) To support a DDR3 1866 MHz (and above) memory, you must install an AMD AM3+ CPU first."

Seems to be some debate regarding AMD FX series in an AM3+ board.

George.

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Hello, Thank you everyone for your replies. Ok, first of all I've got four banks of slots for ram. They are all from the same manufacture, same speed, and same size, I just ordered them in two separate orders. I'm going to get a pair of eyes on them today and give me a chip by chip check to confirm this. I do not have onboard video, my motherboard did not come with it so I've had to use an expansion card. Ben, thanks I did not get your reply, but I'll answer it here. I've removed and replaced each ram chip and the clips are indeed all aligned correctly, the ram is in. I did as I said remove and check the ram count, I've got dual channel so I thought i'd h ave to have the ram in in pairs, which I did during the testing, the numbers were all the same, as I said I can't believe I've got one to two bad chips one per order. Processors, I've got an AMD fx8120 8 core processor in the system. I've checked out the specs, and my motherboard is the rev 1.4. The fx8120 processor is supported as is 1866 mhz ddr3. As for slots, I've got all of them filled though thanks for the info on colors, I didn't throw a color identifier in the box. Specific processor? I hope I didn't make a mistake in the processor vs. the ram, otherwise I'll be having some hardware to part with. Thanks for the info on grml, I've actually got grml 2012.05, I'm going to give that a try, but any information you can give me on it about all I know is to test /proc/meminfo and see what it says, and it's been a while. Thanks again for all the suggestions. Dave. On 5/3/13, John G. Heim wrote:

If it was my machine, I would see what linux said. If you are interested, I can tell you how to do that. There is an accessible live linux distro called grml (pronounced "gremel"). See www.grml.org. We at the UW Math Dept are a mirror so you can download the ISO file at http://dl.math.wisc.edu/grml/

I gave you the the directory name so you could get to the checksums if you want to. A link to the latest iso itself is:

http://dl.math.wisc.edu/grml/grml64-full_2013.02.iso

On 05/02/13 10:53, David Mehler wrote:

...

Hello Everyone,

I've got a new machine and I maxed out it's ram. The board can take 32 GB of ram and that's what it has. It's running win7 professional 64 bit, (I checked Microsoft and that can take 192 GB of ram), and it's not showing ram right.

In system information I'm seeing total physical ram 24 gb, a full 8 short, usable physical ram 16 GB, and available when I look is 14.7 GB. I don't think these numbers are right.

The board is a gigabyte GA970-d3 rev 1.4. I believe it's dual channel. I took out the ram chips in pairs so instead of four the system had two, numbers were still not right, got 12 gb of total ram instead of 16.

The ram is g.skill 1866 clockspeed I believe but in the bios that's only at 1333. I can't believe I've got four bad chips, or since this came in two separate orders one bad chip per order. I'm now wondering if it's a timing issue, if the ram can't clock down from 1866 to 1333 usually in my experience hardware can clock down one level but not two.

I'm going to try a grml 64 USB disk when I return later today see what that shows, and I read it had a ram tester I'll give that a go.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks. Dave.

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