Ram recognised but not usable

Steve Walker · 6 Dec 2017 at 10:25

Hi,
I just bought an extra 16GB of ram to upgrade the 16GB already on the motherboard, but although the ram is the same as the original, the OS windows 7 can see the 32GB but says 16GB is not usable.
Is there an activation that has to be done to make this new ram usable?
I thank you for your help.

Specs:
OS: Windows 7 sp1
Motherboard: Asus Sabretooth 99FX R2.0
Ram: 4 x Team Group Elite Black 8gb DDR3 PC3-132800C11 1600MHz

GWANGY · 6 Dec 2017 at 11:41

32 bit win7?
limitation in BIOS of motherboard?

Is your Bios up to date ?
Normally memory inserted and recognized on boot up, no activation needed..
Do you have w7 home perhaps???
You might have to drop your memory speeds to the supported ones 1088,1300 rather than 1600mhz as maybe the board can drive 16gb (2 slots)at 1600 but not drive all 4 slots at the higher speed.
Do a memtest to make sure all the memoery is good

bremen1874 · 6 Dec 2017 at 12:01

Windows 7 home only supports 16GB of memory. The pro version supports 192GB.

The home versions of Windows 8 & 10 have much higher limits.

Steve Walker · 6 Dec 2017 at 13:14

I have Home 64bit Windows 7 sp1.
I will look at upgrading to Pro.
Thank you for your help.

TheVoice · 6 Dec 2017 at 14:51

Or just switch to 10 for free, you can still do so before the end of the year.

deuse · 7 Dec 2017 at 09:31

TheVoice said:
Or just switch to 10 for free, you can still do so before the end of the year.

Just NO