Memory drops to 4 gig when cooler is on.

hanluc · 14 Jun 2011 at 13:21

Strange on this.. I have an Asus sabertooth X58 mobo, i7 970, 6 gigs xmms ram and a Noctua d14 cooler. I notice that the bios was only showing 4 gigs of ram, so I reseated the cpu, with the noctua cooler just sitting on it ... back up to 6 gigs, as soon as I tightened the screws on the cooler, it dropped down to 4 gigs again.
It's currently running at 6 gigs with the not-so-tight cooler on it but I think my temps are suffering because of it. Anyone come across this before?

Muel · 14 Jun 2011 at 13:24

Sounds dodgy. Maybe something to do with the motherboard bending as the screws are tightened?

shadow_boxer · 14 Jun 2011 at 13:25

I've had this issue before. It's quite common. One of the main reasons was what you have mentioned, tightening the HSF too tightly and the other was a dodgy memory controller on the X58 boards. For some reason with my setup a cold start always shows 6GB of RAM but I restart the system from Windows or a hard reset then it'll show as 4GB in BIOS and My Computer. In other programmes it still detects it at 6GB of RAM though! :confused:

hanluc · 14 Jun 2011 at 13:36

I should say it isn't very tight at all at the moment, the D14 has springs on the screws to prevent over tightening but I can get nowhere near to the bottom, I can twist the cooler slightly and the current tension, and to back up what shadow boxer says when it's at 4 gigs, pc wizard tells me I have 6.

shadow_boxer · 14 Jun 2011 at 18:01

Sounds just like a odd memory controller issue. It's never affected my performance and other than in the BIOS where it detects 4GB of RAM (and My Computer 6.00GB installed (3.99GB useable)) every other programme and application sees 6GB. Never caused any issues with unstable overclocks or crashes/BSOD so just on got on with it and ignored it.

Have just ordered the Antec Kuhler H2O 620 so am going to reseat the CPU this week at some point, will be interesting to see if the issue continues or resolves.