Have 3..2gb ddr3 ram sticks..pc is only reading 4gb.

[Aesthetic816]

Hey my pc is only reading 4gb when i have 6gb installed, everytime is in the sockets securely i switched them around...i had someone suggest to flash the bios that there may be a problem with that part of the motherboard..checked in bios and it only shows 4gb as well, but the weird thing is that sometimes, rarely my pc will show that i have 6gb working, but thats very rare.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Try booting it up with one stick. Find out your bad ram. If none, you have a bad slot.

 

[rootkit]

dumb question, but do you have a 32 or 64 bit OS installed on your PC?

 

[MindoverMaster]

Dang, I forgot about that. Yeah, a 32-bit OS will only show 4GB (~3.5GB)

 

[NoNameNY]

I was going to ask that myself. Its a good excuse to upgrade the OS

 

[Yami]

If the BIOS shows 4GB as well, then 32-bit/64-bit is not the (only) problem.

See if you have the latest BIOS. If not, then updating it to the latest version would probably help.

 

[RichM499]

It also depends which processor he's using. The i5 and older won't use triple channel memory, and that could be the problem. Anything from AMD won't use triple channel.

 

[Yami]

It should use the RAM fine, there just won't be any of the performance benfits of running in dual-/triple-channel. Unless I've completely misunderstood the idea

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Ehh, even if his memory controller dont support dual/tri channel ram, he would still be able to use it, he just won't be getting the increased bandwidth.