Two weird RAM problems, no idea what is causing them...

[Tollorn]

I have two strange symptoms here, they might be caused by the same problem? I built this computer myself back in 2019 and these problems have been present the whole time I've used it, I've just sort of ignored them this whole time, a restart brings RAM usage back down to normal levels.

 

System Hardware:

Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E Gaming

CPU:              i7-8700K OC @ 4.3Ghz

RAM:             32GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 (4x8GB) @ 3000Mhz 

OS:                Windows 10 Home 64bit build 19043.1826

 

Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/wpjKDoq

 

Symptom 1: Windows uses too much RAM for what I have open.

When I open task manager, and sort by RAM usage, the few things I have open don't seem to add up to anywhere near the amount of RAM I'm using. I know chrome loves to use RAM, but 19GB usage for like 8 chrome tabs, steam open, and background tasks? Upon using RamMap to try to visualize where RAM is being used it looks like a lot of games I play still have RAM allocated to them for some reason? Like Beamng.drive, prison architect, etc. But none of those games are currently running.

I'm not entirely sure how to use RamMap but that looks like what's happening to me, unless I'm wrong. Hoping someone here can tell what's going on from the screenshots, can provide more if needed. When I use RamMap to 'Empty' all the things it can empty, usually my RAM usage will go down about 1-1.5GB, but it's still weirdly high. Usually after I do that and might only have two chrome tabs open and no other applications I'm still using like 10GB of RAM somehow, and again sorting by RAM usage in Task Manager and adding up all the things that have RAM allocated to them adds up to nowhere near the amount of RAM it claims is in use. If it says I'm using 10GB of RAM, all the things listed in task manager might add up to maybe 3 or 4GB tops.

 

Symptom 2: Windows won't allow me to use all RAM installed, but acknowledges all RAM installed.

I have an ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E Gaming motherboard, so I know it can support up to 64GB of RAM and I only have 32GB of RAM. Any diagnostic tool I've tried recognizes a full 32GB installed (4x8GB identical sticks) After opening and closing games several times over several days, my RAM usage steadily climbs for no reason (Symptom 1) and once it reaches about 20-21GB of RAM displayed being used in Task Manager, whatever game I'm running will run out of memory and crash or if I'm watching a YouTube video in Chrome, that will crash. Relaunching the game (any game) will cause RAM usage to hit about that same 20-21GB of RAM to be used in Task Manager and the game will crash. Doing a system restart causes RAM usage to go down to normal levels and I can play whatever game I want again. I have not once seen Task manager display a number of RAM usage of higher than ~21GB max the entire three years I've used it, it simply refuses to go above about that range.

I have no other stability issues other than when my RAM reaches about that level. I would think that despite the computer using more RAM than it should be already, the computer would recognize it's got about 12 more GB to go before I've actually used up all my RAM, but apparently not?

I've thought previously that 3000Mhz is a fairly high clock speed for RAM, so maybe my RAM clock speed is too high or something? I have no idea here, and I figure if that were the issue I'd have stability issues at any RAM usage level.

 

Thank you guys for any help you have to offer, I'm pretty lost on this one.

[An0maly_76]

Asus lists several 4x8 DDR4-3000 kits on their QVL for this board, however, I have no way to know which one you have or if yours is one of them.

 

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/ROG_STRIX_Z390-E_GAMING/ROG_Strix_Z390-E_Gaming_QVL_20191226.pdf

Edited August 9, 2022 by An0maly_76
Revised, more info

[Tollorn]

37 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

Asus lists several 4x8 DDR4-3000 kits on their QVL for this board, however, I have no way to know which one you have or if yours is one of them.

 

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/ROG_STRIX_Z390-E_GAMING/ROG_Strix_Z390-E_Gaming_QVL_20191226.pdf

Hmmm, it looks my RAM part number is CMK32GX4M4C3000C15 which actually does not appear on that list... but there's very similar part numbers that do, there's a few that match all the way up to CMK32GX4M4C3... So, does that mean that technically this board and this RAM are not compatible? 

 

Edit: Also, from that part number and some googling, even though 3000 appears in the part number it seems that 2133Mhz might be the clock frequency it was designed to run with, so I changed the click speed down to 2133, but to no avail, I opened a bunch of applications, BeamNG.drive, and like 10 chrome tabs of the WAN show, and the game crashed, followed by chrome freezing for a while. So changing the clock speed down did nothing lol.

[An0maly_76]

1 hour ago, Tollorn said:

Hmmm, it looks my RAM part number is CMK32GX4M4C3000C15 which actually does not appear on that list... but there's very similar part numbers that do, there's a few that match all the way up to CMK32GX4M4C3... So, does that mean that technically this board and this RAM are not compatible? 

I wouldn't bet the farm that they are. It's quite likely they're not.

 

Food for thought. I bought Crucial Ballistix BL16G32C16U4B.16FE for a 1700 rig back in 2020. It put up a fight with two other upgrades. Board literally SHUT DOWN and had to be RMA'd. After that, it never really was quite right, never occurred to me that the RAM might be a factor. Bought the same kit for a 5900X build recently, which has had stupiditis (random POST failure with no video) about once every 8-12 cold boots. Troubleshooting pointed to the board, but when you swap the same RAM and have the same issue, you're not necessarily troubleshooting per se... Yeah, yeah, I know... You're a dumb-ass, Beavis... (me, not you) Huh-huh... Huh-huh...

 

Anyway, those DIMMs tested fine in the same machine, so I popped one of them and the GPU in another machine for good measure. Strange lag / behavior on POST, and installing the other DIMM created a POST failure. Rut-row, Raggy... Since then, the board has returned from RMA "Could not duplicate issue" and the machine with the one functional DIMM now has random audio-only and audio/video cutout when gaming. Does not happen playing an MP4 video. And, it just so happens, not only are these BL16G32C16U4B.16FE NOT on the QVL list for the previous MSI B450M Bazooka, they aren't on the QVL for the current ASRock B450M HDV or Asus TUF B550-PLUS, either. That 1700 rig is still in my possession and it turns out the two sticks are showing different speeds, which should not happen.

 

The strange thing is that the Asus board's QVL shows one, two, three Patriot Viper kits with the same timings, voltage, and speed as the BL16G32C16U4B.16FE, but the BL16G32C16U4B.16FE was not listed. I'm not taking chances. The Asus board will get Patriot Viper Blackout 4 PVB432G320C6K (2x16 DDR4-3200), the ASRock will get Ballistix BL2K16G36C16U4B (2x16 DDR4-3600), which ARE on each board's respective QVL lists. Interestingly, the BL2K16G36C16U4B timings are 16-18-18-38, vs the BL16G32C16U4B.16FE kit's 16-18-18-36.

 

I was admittedly a Ballistix fanboy, being told Ballistix were the best RAM for Ryzen, especially with higher-than expected Cinebench scores running this stuff. But I've found an interesting bit -- these BL16G32C16U4B.16FE kits were manufactured single-rank (chips on one side only) AND double-rank (chips on BOTH sides of the board). And apparently, with some boards, this DOES make a difference. Don't ask me why, just explaining how I found out the hard way.

 

So, no, I wouldn't bet on your RAM being compatible with your board. Its absence from the QVL list, to me, means that if it does work, it's not going to work well -- as you're obviously experiencing. My board's debug lights resembled a short-circuiting traffic light -- DRAM amber, CPU red, VGA white, BOOT white, then green if it managed to POST. After the fits this 5900X has given me over what is now probably an issue with incompatible RAM, I'll never build another machine with RAM that's not on the board's QVL list again. This build has been a monumental pain in my ass as a result. I built it in March, and it's been partially disassembled twelve times for troubleshooting. TWELVE TIMES. OVER RAM.

 

People can say RAM is RAM is RAM is RAM all they want. I'll never believe THAT again. Do with that what you will.

Edited August 9, 2022 by An0maly_76
Revised, more info

[Tollorn]

39 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

People can say RAM is RAM is RAM is RAM all they want. I'll never believe THAT again. Do with that what you will.

That's terrible lol, I'm tempted to buy a specific set of RAM from their QVL, but I'm scared that I'll spend $100-150+ just to have the problem persist.  

[An0maly_76]

7 minutes ago, Tollorn said:

That's terrible lol, I'm tempted to buy a specific set of RAM from their QVL, but I'm scared that I'll spend $100-150+ just to have the problem persist.  

Look at it this way, if you don't try it, you'll still have the same problem, and you'll never know if that was the problem. Only reason I figured it out was the one stick causing a no-POST in the other machine just before the other one started acting stupid. Apparently this stuff has been flaky from day one.

 

Which brings to mind another theory -- what if DIMMs have different part numbers because they have to be made different, not only for different boards, but for Intel vs AMD? Makes me want to look up the QVL lists for Asus B560 / B660 to see if the RAM SKUs match the ones for my B550. That'd be a hell of a note if they don't.

Edited August 9, 2022 by An0maly_76
Revised, more info

[Guest]

Quote

 After opening and closing games several times over several days, my RAM usage steadily climbs

In task manager, are the games closing? Is the engine just minimizing and not closing or stuck something preventing the "game/s" from closing.

 

Are any games you play known to cause memory leaks? 

 

An0maly_76 is giving you this idea after all diagnostics have been exhausted.

[Tollorn]

2 minutes ago, Guest 5150 said:

In task manager, are the games closing? Is the engine just minimizing and not closing or stuck something preventing the "game/s" from closing.

 

Are any games you play known to cause memory leaks? 

 

An0maly_76 is giving you this idea after all diagnostics have been exhausted.

I have poked around in Task Manager and it looks like games are actually closed and not running in the background somehow. The only thing I can tell is that in RamMap it'll show under 'File Summary' a few things from the games I play while they're not open. Once I click 'Empty' at the top of RamMap, it'll get rid of these, but still only lower my RAM usage by 1-1.5GB and will still be left using too much RAM for what I have open. It doesn't seem to be a particular game causing the issue, cause I have had phases where I don't play BeamNG for a few weeks or however long, and the problem persists even without the game being played.  

 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Tollorn said:

I have poked around in Task Manager and it looks like games are actually closed and not running in the background somehow. The only thing I can tell is that in RamMap it'll show under 'File Summary' a few things from the games I play while they're not open. Once I click 'Empty' at the top of RamMap, it'll get rid of these, but still only lower my RAM usage by 1-1.5GB and will still be left using too much RAM for what I have open. It doesn't seem to be a particular game causing the issue, cause I have had phases where I don't play BeamNG for a few weeks or however long, and the problem persists even without the game being played.  

 

clip pic~ 

Oh it's Beam NG Drive.

Is there a bunch of non working mods? I'd remove them all. Only keep the ones that work and that you do use installed. 

 

For clearing up unused memory on the fly (also can tinker with a lot of other shit* pardon my American english verbals) is a program called QuickCpu. When you visit their page, the DL link is pretty much all the way at the bottom.

 

Once you get that up and running, hit the "memory" tab at the top. Bottom center you'll see a button says "clean" click that. That should clear anything in the priority list, stuff that you don't see in task manager. Threads I think they call em' not necessarily entire processes.

[An0maly_76]

Yeah, my BeamNG.drive was corrupted somehow by the "F0rd Engine Pack" mod, which somehow caused issues with map surfaces (falling through plateaus on the Utah map and being able to drive through some of the trees on the Automation Test Track map), as well as glass, exhaust and other parts showing orange and failing to load textures on certain vehicles the mod applied to -- EVEN AFTER REMOVING THE DAMNED MOD!

 

I had 88 mods at that point, and I narrowed down the ones I knew weren't a problem, but ultimately had to blow it away and reinstall the whole game before it was right again. Guest 5150 isn't whistling Dixie when they say you have to be careful with mods, not just in BeamNG.drive, but ANY game. Some mods actually overwrite game files and create a mess.

Edited August 9, 2022 by An0maly_76
Revised, more info

[Guest]

1 minute ago, An0maly_76 said:

Yeah, my BeamNG.drive was corrupted somehow by the "F0rd Engine Pack" mod, which somehow caused issues with map surfaces (falling through plateaus on the Utah map and being able to drive through some of the trees on the Automation Test Track map), as well as glass, exhaust and other parts showing orange and failing to load textures on certain vehicles the mod applied to -- EVEN AFTER REMOVING THE DAMNED MOD! I had 88 mods at that point, and I narrowed down the ones I knew weren't a problem, but ultimately had to blow it away and reinstall the whole game before it was right again. Guest 5150 isn't whistling Dixie when they say you have to be careful with mods, not just in BeamNG.drive, but ANY game. Some mods actually overwrite game files and create a mess.

I think my son's mods folder (at one time) was around 30gb easy. 

 

But dude, I had a heck of a time cleaning that game up enough to just run smoothly again and man he was having game startup issues, couldn't get online, some update thing failed. I spent an entire weekend on that game. But it's a wonderful game, I really like it. Put's his 2700X to the test with AI on boy let me tell you! Before I cleaned the case out, (it was really bad in there!!) that cpu fan was full tilt all the time. Had some dog hair and dust clogged heat sink. But I neglected it's cleaning last year because we moved to the new house.

 

A lot of mods stopped working after some update sometime spring that passed. 

[An0maly_76]

1 minute ago, Guest 5150 said:

I think my son's mods folder (at one time) was around 30gb easy. 

 

But dude, I had a heck of a time cleaning that game up enough to just run smoothly again and man he was having game startup issues, couldn't get online, some update thing failed. I spent an entire weekend on that game. But it's a wonderful game, I really like it. Put's his 2700X to the test with AI on boy let me tell you! Before I cleaned the case out, (it was really bad in there!!) that cpu fan was full tilt all the time. Had some dog hair and dust clogged heat sink. But I neglected it's cleaning last year because we moved to the new house.

 

A lot of mods stopped working after some update sometime spring that passed. 

Wouldn't have been during that dumb-ass update blitz from May to October where they updated six or seven times every two to three weeks, would it? That's about the time I started having issues -- maybe it wasn't just the mod, then.

[Guest]

Just now, An0maly_76 said:

Wouldn't have been during that dumb-ass update blitz from May to October where they updated six or seven times every two to three weeks, would it? That's about the time I started having issues -- maybe it wasn't just the mod, then.

Not sure, But I can see that game with an active mod running that just never shut down leak memory. Or just slowly eat it up rather. 

 

It could have been fall time. It was cool out yet. All I know, he has a full 500GB drive packed with games. I keep telling him to wipe the mod folder, It'll give him easily 20GB back if he picks through and tosses the stuff he doesn't use. But being 10, that might be above his pay grade XD.

[An0maly_76]

3 minutes ago, Guest 5150 said:

All I know, he has a full 500GB drive packed with games. I keep telling him to wipe the mod folder, It'll give him easily 20GB back if he picks through and tosses the stuff he doesn't use. But being 10, that might be above his pay grade XD.

Being autistic, I can't talk. In some ways, my brain is still ten years old, or six years old, etc.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

Being autistic, I can't talk. In some ways, my brain is still ten years old, or six years old, etc.

My oldest is autistic. 21 years old now. Great kid, he doesn't shut up actually. He does a lot of talking to himself and makes for some great conversations. He does all his problem solving in private, but out loud. Not loud, quietly talking you know.... 

 

He's not a PC guy though. He's into Fire alarm equipment. Even has his own YouTube channel and everything. (no he's not rich lol) But that's his thing he does that's electronics related.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_KC4VcV6wvEFLUaGcWQ29A

 

(this is not an advertisement, if need be can remove this link later)

[Tollorn]

Alright, slight update: I have since learned what the difference is between committed RAM and in use RAM. Basically, my committed memory reaches the max, or about the max it can and then applications start having issues because more RAM can't be allocated to them... So how do I get my committed memory to be lower? Sometimes it'll be like 20GB in use, 28.5GB committed.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, Tollorn said:

Alright, slight update: I have since learned what the difference is between committed RAM and in use RAM. Basically, my committed memory reaches the max, or about the max it can and then applications start having issues because more RAM can't be allocated to them... So how do I get my committed memory to be lower? Sometimes it'll be like 20GB in use, 28.5GB committed.

To figure out what's using committed memory ,look at Task Manager "Details". Enable the "Commit Size" column.

The Memory Private working set column correlates with "Processes" for Memory. This is the RAM is committed virtual address space. Everything else should be in page file.

[Tollorn]

3 hours ago, Guest 5150 said:

To figure out what's using committed memory ,look at Task Manager "Details". Enable the "Commit Size" column.

The Memory Private working set column correlates with "Processes" for Memory. This is the RAM is committed virtual address space. Everything else should be in page file.

Um. Would it be a problem then if I had memory virtualization disabled? 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Tollorn said:

Um. Would it be a problem then if I had memory virtualization disabled? 

Yeah, that probably would create the issue you're facing if you don't have an active page file.

[Tollorn]

7 hours ago, Guest 5150 said:

Yeah, that probably would create the issue you're facing if you don't have an active page file.

Yeah I forgot that I disabled that forever ago, cause I thought "Oh, why would I want it trying to use a harddrive for RAM? That would make it so slow." So I set is to 0MB. Doing some googling now, it seems like the general rule is 1.5x the amount of RAM I have installed should be allocated for virtual memory. That seems like a lot because I have 32GB installed, so that would be 48GB allocated for virtual memory, isn't that a lot? Also, to maximize performance would I want to re-enable virtual memory but only give it like 1-2GB so that it has access to that feature, but it can't rely heavily on it?

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, Tollorn said:

Yeah I forgot that I disabled that forever ago, cause I thought "Oh, why would I want it trying to use a harddrive for RAM? That would make it so slow." So I set is to 0MB. Doing some googling now, it seems like the general rule is 1.5x the amount of RAM I have installed should be allocated for virtual memory. That seems like a lot because I have 32GB installed, so that would be 48GB allocated for virtual memory, isn't that a lot? Also, to maximize performance would I want to re-enable virtual memory but only give it like 1-2GB so that it has access to that feature, but it can't rely heavily on it?

Ok, so virtual memory will usually get used with idle threads and running programs to system memory.

 

Allocation can be done automatically instead of a set size, let windows decide that.

 

You should have no reduction in performance at all, you won't even notice its there just like before you disabled it.