Server Memory Upgrade

I got some new memory for my GA-P55A-UD4P motherboard. It is supposed to support 16Gb of RAM: sweet!!!

So, I got some Kingston which in general the Gigabyte motherboards support. (I had some before.)

I turned off the server and then the powersupply1.

I remove the 2 x 2Gb of RAM and install the new 4 x 4Gb sticks. Make sure it's well sited multiple times...

I turned on the computer and go to the BIOS to see what is discovered:

Cool, Bank 1, 2, 3, and 4 say 4096 Mb of memory. Great!

Ah... but... below we have another line and only Bank 1 and 2 are accepted. Bank 3 and 4 are marked with gray dashes.

Total memory 8Gb instead of 16Gb. Darn!

Research

Looking around on the Internet I find the fact that you should probably use what's called "Profile 1" for the memory to work better.

I changed the settings in the BIOS and reboot. No difference, other than the fact that the memory is used at the correct speed (1600Mhz instead of the default 1333Mhz.)

However, I'm still have 8Gb of RAM.

So I look further on the Internet and see that there were changes in version 13 of the BIOS labeled "memory compatibility enhancements". So I decide to upgrade my BIOS. Problem: the only two options offered is to run with the internal BIOS Qflash tool or run a software either under DOS or MS-Windows.

Having Linux only, that's a bit of a challenge to run DOS or MS-Windows... but Qflash could work for me?

Looking around I see that it should support either a Floppy, a USB drive or a hard drive. No way that I'd mess up my hard drives for that. There are no FAT partitions on there...

So, first I check with a USB drive and it didn't work at all. Going to Qflash it asks me to enter the drive. It is in but not recognized. Checking that Flash drive with fdisk, I notice that it's not so good. I bet that the partition table is screwed on there (maybe that allows for a few extra sectors on the drive?!)

Also, when I tried that, twice, it locked up.

Second I think that the floppy would be the easiest, I have a floppy drive, just need to connect it and off I go... Oh! Except that the file to be flashed is over 2Mb and a standard 3.5" floppy accepts... 1.44Mb. Wasted 1h on that one...

This is where I am now. I have another thumb drive with a better setup and will try that one instead. Also, I made it bootable with a version of FreeDOS2 and the FlashSPI.exe file from the upgrade package offered by Gigabyte.

Update

So... the latest news: I was able to update my BIOS (finally!)

The FreeDOS boot did not work. The syslinux system does not seem to be capable of booting FreeDOS. I'm wondering about the idea/concept of such anyway... When booted on the thumb drive, I get an error saying that syslinux cannot find the kernel or something of the sort.

However, I tested with a different thumbnail that was properly formatted by me a while back. This is neat but annoying that you need to know such... This being said, the QFlash tool worked like a charm with the correct Thumb drive. It was properly recognized and shown in the list of drives to choose from.

So, I now have the latest BIOS running (F14). But unfortunately the memory is still 8Gb. Somehow it recognizes the 16Gb but can only use 8Gb.

Final Results

Well... I tried 2 types of 16Gb memory sticks. One from Kingstons and one from Crucial. Both only shown 8Gb (Bank 1 and 2 work, 3 and 4 are detected, but not offered.)

So... I decided to try with another 2 x 2Gb to see whether that would work better. Thus, I had 4 x 2Gb for 8Gb.

Again, Bank 3 and 4 would show the available memory (2048) on the DIMM Slot line but not in the Enabled Slot line. Booting would only show 4Gb as expected by what the BIOS was saying.

Just in case, I tried to put my 2 x 2Gb of memory in the white slots (bank 1 and 3 as you're supposed to do) and I got only 2Gb of RAM working!

Thus, I finally decided that I'd have to make do with only 8Gb and got 2 x 4Gb sticks for my board. That works greatly, but it is sad that I cannot get 4 x 4Gb...

For better stability, I took 1333Mhz memory instead of the 1600Mhz which seems to make the board a bit flaky (it didn't always boot with the 1600Mhz sticks!) This being said, some people said they inserted 2000Mhz memory sticks with this motherboard and it works for them... so don't take my word for it. Depends how you use your computer, I guess.

Any reasons?

Got to place a blame too

From my research, the problems with the memory are either due to bad memory (not gold plated...) which after testing with 3 different types is not a good answer to my point of view, or the P55 chipset from Intel. That seems more likely because I've noticed people complaining about the same problems on completely different motherboards (different manufacturer, but the P55 chipset.)

So it looks like the culprit here.

Another note about this board, the two onboard NICs are not working. They were blown away whenever I was rebooting a while back. After one too many reboots, they were not functional anymore.

flashrom

Along the way, I found flashrom.org. Unfortunately, they do not support SPI since the producer doesn't care about sharing their intellectual property with random people.

However, if you have an older board or one that doesn't use SPI (note that they have some SPI support, just that it doesn't work on my board) then you probably want to look at their website.

This is actually a really cool tool.

Notes about the BIOS upgrade package

WARNING

The .exe file contains an autoexec.bat script. Make sure to create a new folder and extract in that folder so the system you're running doesn't take that new file in account when rebooting.

I noticed that many people had problems in regard to extracting the BIOS data from the .exe offered by Gigabyte. The .exe is an executable created by some general tool and decompressing them can be done under Linux using either rar (older) or 7zip (newer, they switch around 2009 or 2010 if I'm correct.)

The .exe file will include 1 or more files. In case of the GA-P55A-UD4P version 14 there are 3 files:

p55aud4p.f14   The actual file to be flashed (the replacement file)

autoexec.bat   In case you make a booting floppy or USB thumb drive, it can automatically start the FlashSPI tool. I do not recommend you use that file.

FLASHSPI.EXE   A utility used to flash the BIOS with the p55aud4p.f14 file, assuming you can run it (i.e. you have MS-Windows or a DOS environment.)

To use with the Qflash tool from the BIOS you do not need anything else than the p55aud4p.f14 file. The other two can safely be ignored. If you want to upgrade from MS-Windows or DOS, then you want to run FLASHSPI.EXE with the name of the file to upgrade:

    flashspi.exe p55aud4p.f14

Note: I did not try that (yet).

• 1. I have one of those power supply you can turn off, there is a switch on it... Without doing so, I can still see some lights on the network connectors meaning that electricity is still running in the machine!
• 2. FreeDOS is the continuation (from what I understand) of the OpenDOS project which is now abandoned.