Anyone here with MSI 970 Motherboard?

Barlett

Hey all,

I've an MSI 970 Motherboard that I recently purchased but having serious issues with the RAM. I bought a pair of 8gb HyperX Fury 1866 MHZ DDR3 sticks to go with it but windows says (7.96gb usable) the rest being kept for hardware.

Then when I go to run a game like XCOM 2 it says it needs more than 2gb of RAM to run and when I look at CAN I RUN IT...it says I've only 2gb of ram despite having 16gb installed.

BIOS sees the full 16gb and I have the latest BIOS installed. Any ideas?

ED E

You arent perhaps running a starter edition of Windows? Its definitely 64bit yes?

kearneybobs

What does your MSI Update utility or Windows say is installed? You might not have it installed which is fair enough.
If you're running a started ed of Windows, like the install that comes with a netbook etc you'll be limited to 2GB RAM.
Have you tried booting with either RAM stick installed to see if one of them could be a problem.
Check to see if they're maybe placed in the correct pair of RAM slots pair.

Might be worth posting/investigating over in the MSI forums. Mods etc are really helpful, I've found.

This thread here on Tom's Hardware isn't the exact same symptoms but could help you troubleshoot.

You buy the RAM as a pair (bundled+ tested) together or did you just buy two sticks separately?

marcbrophy

Latest BIOS on the product page, version M.4, states that it has better memory compatibility.

https://us.msi.com/product/motherboard/support/970-GAMING.html#down-bios

Also, memory is dual channel, but there's 4 dimm slots, so typically 1 and 2 will read together.

Moon54

Check that the RAM is installed in the right slots.
It's dual channel RAM so for that motherboard the two matched sticks must be in slot 1 & slot 3 for Dual-Channel operation.
See page 24 in manual.

Dyr

Don't buy MSI motherboards would be my advice tbh

Failing that do NOT use the MSI liveupdate utility for your BIOS. Chances are you'll brick it

I've been trying to update an MSI boards' bios for about four days, they're a pain in the hole

kearneybobs

I've never had a problem with my Z87 G45 board. The BIOS update is a bit of a pain in the hole to do right but fine once you know what you're doing.

I find that the mods over on the MSI forums are good but they tend to assume you know what they're talking about making it a bit harder for you to decipher what you need to do, especially when it comes to BIOS updating.

Dyr

kearneybobs wrote: »

I've never had a problem with my Z87 G45 board. The BIOS update is a bit of a pain in the hole to do right but fine once you know what you're doing.

I find that the mods over on the MSI forums are good but they tend to assume you know what they're talking about making it a bit harder for you to decipher what you need to do, especially when it comes to BIOS updating.

I generally know what I'm doing, I just find their BIOS upgrade process to be daft.

The liveupdate thing is just criminal at that stage

kearneybobs

Bambi wrote: »

I generally know what I'm doing, I just find their BIOS upgrade process to be daft.

The liveupdate thing is just criminal at that stage

Obv the safest way to do it is via bootable USB but setting it up and actually doing it is harder to do unless you've some idea on what you should be doing.

Dyr

kearneybobs wrote: »

Obv the safest way to do it is via bootable USB but setting it up and actually doing it is harder to do unless you've some idea on what you should be doing.

Oh I've done it the USB flash, reset cmos, three diferrent ways, load defaults.
It just doesn't want to acknowledge the fact


God be with the days of a floppy disk and your parish priest saying a quick decade of the rosary