Memory madness!

[A3L]

I have an old Dell PC. It is a optiplex 7010. I'm running a GTX 980ti. This is the PC I rely on for business and gaming. I recently decided to upgrade to 16 gb of ram from 8. I purchased the exact same ram that I previously bought. PNY 4GB 1600. I added the extra ram into the system and the bios did not recognize any new ram. I verified that the bios said these newly filled ram slots are EMPTY even though they have properly installed ram in the slots. I then tried all different combinations. I tried each ram stick by itself and found all ram sticks are recognized and boot into windows. I tried each slot and verified ALL the ram slots work in the bios. I can install 2 ram sticks in any slots and come up with a functioning 8GB of ram. Once I try to install any other ram (12GB or 16GB) in any slot this ram is not recognized. I reseated my i5 3470 and it didnt help. I purchased a e3 1270v2 and tried that and it also will not recognize any ram combination over 8GB. I'm leaning toward a bad motherboard. It's funny, because I don't have any dead ram slots, only when I try to use them together. I'm lost. 

[WhitetailAni]

So:
Your old RAM works no matter the slots.

Your new RAM works no matter the slots.
Each stick works fine.

But when mixing them together the new ones don't work.

What happens if you put one old and one new stick together?

[A3L]

Good question. Let me try that. 

[TehDwonz]

3 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Try what ragnarok0273 said, but if all of the slots work and all of the sticks also work then it could be a firmware lock, you see the guys at Dell -or any OEM- aren't decent people so they ask their engineers to lock mobos making impossible for users to upgrade, memory locks, graphics card locks, CPU locks... proprietary power supplies and so on. Think about it, if users could upgrade whatever they wanted they wouldn't need to buy another prebuilt with "better" specs.

 

Sometimes you can bypass these locks but the procedures involve reprogramming the BIOS and I'm pretty sure going into details about that is forbidden by the CS of this forum so I can't say anything without getting banned.

For Dell, various combinations of CTRL, ALT, SHIFT and F1 when in BIOS, usually allows access to more advanced menus. Try CTRL-F1 first. If you are successful in gaining access to the advance menu(s), pressing ALT-F will toggle manufacturing mode. It might not allow any useful changes, but it might reveal if there is a RAM size lock in place.

[A3L]

I have an older dell optiplex 790 i5 2500 that has samsung 1333 memory in it. I took my PNY memory out and put it in that PC. It WORKS! and recognizes all 16 GB of ram. So back to the optiplex 7010.  I tried running one new stick and one older stick of the PNY ram. They will work together. So, I decided to get crazy and mix this samsung 1333 memory into my PNY 1600 and see what happened. I have a samsung 1333 in slot 1 and 4, pny 1600 in slot 2 and 3. Booted up my machine into bios. It says memory installed 8192 MB. dual interLeave DIMM 1 and DIMM 2 4096. DIMM 3 and 4 DIMM slot empty. The funny thing, it says I'm running the ram 1600mhz and slot 1 has a 1333 chip in it. 

[A3L]

Well, besides buying a whole new PC. What motherboard would be good for my 16GB of PNY 1600 ddr3, E3 1270v2 and a GTX 980ti? lol

[A3L]

10 minutes ago, A3L said:

I cannot access any advanced bios options with any combination of CTRL, shift, alt F1