so hi everyone, so my laptop had 8GB ram(1600mhz) pre-installed and manjaro was working fine with that and I added another 4 GB stick with the same speed yesterday. the problem is my bios now shows 12GB ram and even manjaro Sudo dmidecode recognizes the another 4GB ram but it’s not being used as you can see in the free command
Outputs of dmidecode and free
dmidecode 3.3
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 2.8 present.
Handle 0x000B, DMI type 16, 23 bytes
Physical Memory Array
Location: System Board Or Motherboard
Use: System Memory
Error Correction Type: None
Maximum Capacity: 32 GB
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Number Of Devices: 2
Handle 0x000C, DMI type 17, 40 bytes
Memory Device
Array Handle: 0x000B
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Total Width: 64 bits
Data Width: 64 bits
Size: 4 GB
Form Factor: SODIMM
Set: None
Locator: DIMM 0
Bank Locator: CHANNEL A
Type: DDR3
Type Detail: Synchronous Unbuffered (Unregistered)
Speed: 1600 MT/s
Manufacturer: Not Specified
Serial Number: 00000000
Asset Tag: Asset Tag:
Part Number: Not Specified
Rank: 1
Configured Memory Speed: 800 MT/s
Minimum Voltage: Unknown
Maximum Voltage: Unknown
Configured Voltage: Unknown
Handle 0x000D, DMI type 17, 40 bytes
Memory Device
Array Handle: 0x000B
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Total Width: 64 bits
Data Width: 64 bits
Size: 8 GB
Form Factor: SODIMM
Set: None
Locator: DIMM 0
Bank Locator: CHANNEL B
Type: DDR3
Type Detail: Synchronous Unbuffered (Unregistered)
Speed: 1600 MT/s
Manufacturer: Kingston
Serial Number: 432A5F36
Asset Tag: Asset Tag:
Part Number: ACR16D3LS1KNG/8G
Rank: 2
Configured Memory Speed: 800 MT/s
Minimum Voltage: Unknown
Maximum Voltage: Unknown
Configured Voltage: Unknown
free -h Wednesday 05 May 2021 04:22:45 AM
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 6.7Gi 1.6Gi 3.6Gi 206Mi 1.5Gi 4.7Gi
Swap: 0B 0B 0B
There is no real way to tell which of those RAM modules are being used or not, IIRC.
Also, I have 16GB of RAM but Linux has never used more than 10GB. Plainly because it has never needed any more. It won’t take more than what’s necessary.
So relax. It’s obviously because there is more than enough for it.
I think you are misunderstanding his question. He has 2 modules, 8 GB and 4 GB. His bios detects total RAM as 12 GB (8+4) which is correct but the distro still show’s total RAM as 6.7 GB. Even if the 4 GB RAM is not being used, it should still get detected and added to the total RAM in “free -h”
For example, I have 16 GB (8+8) and here is what my “free -h” looks like.
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 15Gi 6.8Gi 1.7Gi 390Mi 7.0Gi 8.1Gi
Swap: 511Mi 0B 511Mi
Now coming back to OP’s problem, I don’t really know the solution but @arshadpakkali can you check what sudo lshw -C memory
spits out for you?
Maybe because it allocates part of the RAM to iGPU (that is surely why you have 6.7G out of the 8G stick in the system), there is something weird happening when you boot the system on the detected amount of RAM. Maybe you have some option in the BIOS related to RAM but without the possibility of checking the BIOS ourselves it is hard to tell.
thanks for the reply everyone, and yeah what you’ve said is exactly my problem and the output of lshw is down below. so as you can see from here everything detects the memory but it doesn’t show up more than 6.
and I’ve even tried fill my ram up to 6 and as expected it gets to 6 and hangs rather than using the second stick
ok I am not sure what the problem could be but it is possible the 4gb RAM stick is defunct. Especially the Serial for that stick is being shown as 00000000. Maybe you can check that by trying to boot with just the 4gb stick. And also try switching slots when you test just the 4 gb stick. Might lead us to narrowing down the problem if it is with the new 4gb stick.
hey thanks, everyone for helping out, so basically the RAM was defective after all that’s why it was causing trouble I tried only with the ram and it didn’t boot and swapped it for a new 4gb stick now everything works fine