RAM not being used

[FrozenWaffle]

Recently I upgraded from 8 GB of DDR4 ram to 16GB. In the beginning, everything seemed to be going fine, I was able to use all the ram and my games ran way better since the ram wasn't bottlenecking my other components. But then a few days ago, I was playing DA Inquisition and my game crashed on me. I restarted my computer but when it tried to come back on, there were 3 long beeping noises coming from my motherboard. Looked it up, saw that it meant there might be something going on with the ram. So I took them out, put them back in, that didn't seem to work. I cleared my bios and unplugged everything from my computer. When it started up again, the noise was still there, but then it stopped and my computer booted up. I figured I solved the issue, but nope, my computer says I have 16GB installed, but when I go to my task manager it's only using 8GB. I have no idea if it's a problem with the ram or the motherboard, I've only had one of the sticks for a month and the other for about 2 years. It all started with that game crash, before that everything was flawless. Does anyone know what's going and if there are any solutions? Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: Just entered the bios to see if anything was up, once I confirmed the setting and my computer booted up the beeping was still there, but then it booted up regularly. Still not able to use 16GB.

[Bombastinator]

Could be either.  Could also be one stick of bad memory, or just some dirt in one of the slots.

[__Benedict]

Are they the same RAM modules? There can be problems if they're trying to run at different frequencies or timings. The newer module may be trying to force the older one to run at a frequency or timings that it can't use.

[FrozenWaffle]

Just now, __Benedict said:

Are they the same RAM modules? There can be problems if they're trying to run at different frequencies or timings. The newer module may be trying to force the older one to run at a frequency or timings that it can't use.

Yes these are the same exact models

 

[FrozenWaffle]

9 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Could be either.  Could also be one stick of bad memory, or just some dirt in one of the slots.

I might be able to return it and get a new one but that's a somewhat long process with amazon and I wanna make sure It's not something I can solve. I might end up doing it though.

[Skipple]

Are they in the correct slots? Normally 2,4

[FrozenWaffle]

2 minutes ago, Skipple said:

Are they in the correct slots? Normally 2,4

My motherboard only has two slots and they were working perfectly fine before.

[Bombastinator]

So going from 2x4 to 2x8 then?

if you put 1 stick in slot 1 do they each read and work?