Current Setup:
Intel i7 990x stock
EVGA X58 FTW3
6x4gb gskill 1600 9-9-9-24 ram
500gb SSD (main), 1TB SSD (secondary)
1000W PSU, and 2 GTX 680's
I need to give a bit of background on what has happened; I have had this setup for a while now, everything worked great, all 24gb of my ram was recognized. Today I got a bunch of bsods, I did some searching and found it was software based, so I reinstalled windows on my 1TB SSD. After reinstalling it seems it may have been corrupt because I kept getting the damn bsods, so I installed windows on my 500gb SSD instead - it worked and everything was fine except I noticed windows system information was listing 24gb (7.99 usable). I decided to look further into it and low and behold my BIOS shows ~8.3gb for use. Additionally it was EXTREMELY hot today, I really hope none of my components got fried but at this point it may be a possibility but I need to ask here first (just keep this point on the back burner for now)
The problem:
1.) BIOS is showing only 8gb
2.) Windows is showing 24gb (7.99 usable) also it says it is allocating 16gb to hardware
Things I have tried:
1.) Updated BIOS - all updated
2.) msconfig advanced boot options maximum memory checked and unchecked - I tried both.
3.) Physically took out each stick of ram and tested them - no problems
4.) Modifying the voltage settings/timings since the BIOS likes to set my default to 7-7-7-20 and everything else to auto (however, when I set it to 9-9-9-24 the voltage was 1.7v stock 1600 should be 1.5v so I have not tested that. I am not an expert by any means so I'm hesitant about doing that.)
Random other notes:
I took out each stick and put them all in different slots, initially this fixed the BIOS, to which it showed 24gb; however, upon another restart BIOS showed 8gb.
Things I have yet to try:
9-9-9-24, 1600, at 1.5v
memtest86+ (I don't know if I should since I'm pretty damn sure it is nothing to do with the ram)
physical cmos clear on the mobo (I have no idea why this would work but I am running out of ideas)
I will take any help you guys can offer; I am extremely disheartened about this since if it is a component error I don't believe I am covered by warranty and I am not in a good financial standing to replace these components. I have been struggling all day trying to solve this problem and it is driving me absolutely insane!!! Thank you.
-Flub