Soldato
Time to buy a matched 4GB set and sell the 3GB 
Installed Memory 3.00GB (2.00 GB Usable)
- Thread starter Infamous
- Start date
Don't buy any new RAM yet! I bet you'd just get the same problem.
We seem to be looking at this the wrong way. If the system boots with 3GB, the BIOS shows 3GB and Windows detects 3GB installed and runs stably on 2GB, this is unlikely to be a timing issue. I've never seen a motherboard which will 'disable' one stick of RAM if the timings or voltages are wrong, or if the memory's incompatible. It will either use all the RAM and be unstable, or fail to boot at all.
There's some not-so-good advice being given in that Corsair thread. I've run several mobos with 3 sticks installed. The board will just run in a 'mixed' mode where two of the sticks run as a pair in dual channel and the third one doesn't. For maximum stability, you do need to make sure that the two sticks operating as a pair are the same. But mixing RAM wouldn't cause the problem you're having. It'd just cause instability or failure to boot.
You need to figure out if it's just Windows which isn't using the extra RAM, or if it's a BIOS issue. Can you download and burn a copy of Memtest86 to see if it detects all the RAM? That would have the added bonus of seeing whether the memory is stable or not.
We seem to be looking at this the wrong way. If the system boots with 3GB, the BIOS shows 3GB and Windows detects 3GB installed and runs stably on 2GB, this is unlikely to be a timing issue. I've never seen a motherboard which will 'disable' one stick of RAM if the timings or voltages are wrong, or if the memory's incompatible. It will either use all the RAM and be unstable, or fail to boot at all.
There's some not-so-good advice being given in that Corsair thread. I've run several mobos with 3 sticks installed. The board will just run in a 'mixed' mode where two of the sticks run as a pair in dual channel and the third one doesn't. For maximum stability, you do need to make sure that the two sticks operating as a pair are the same. But mixing RAM wouldn't cause the problem you're having. It'd just cause instability or failure to boot.
You need to figure out if it's just Windows which isn't using the extra RAM, or if it's a BIOS issue. Can you download and burn a copy of Memtest86 to see if it detects all the RAM? That would have the added bonus of seeing whether the memory is stable or not.