TrueNAS SCALE not detecting 8GB RAM, BIOS does though

[miked]

I'm attempting to build a NAS backup sever and on installation of TrueNAS SCALE it doesn't detect the installed 8GB of RAM, although the BIOS correctly detect the 8GB.

My motherboard doesn't have the latest BIOS, it's currently at 7.20 instead of 7.40. However 7.40 only improves GPU compatibility for GeForce RTX 40 series so updating it doesn't seem necessary, to me. I'm hesitant to update the BIOS.

Motherboard: ASRock A320M-ITX (BIOS 7.20)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 3600MHz
PSU: Corsair SF600
RAM: 8GB - 2x4GB DDR4 (Viper Patriot) At 2133 currently
Boot Drive: Kingston NV2 NVMe 250GB
Hard drives: 2x Seagate IronWolf 8TB SATA

Have I got enough RAM installed? I've only just noticed that 16GB is recommended but from reading online it seems like 8GB would be enough for my use. I am a beginner at this, if that wasn't clear! Thanks

 

[WN1X]

You really need to install at least 16GB of RAM. Scale might boot with 8GB, but performance would suffer dramatically.

 

[Whattteva]

I'm attempting to build a NAS backup sever and on installation of TrueNAS SCALE it doesn't detect the installed 8GB of RAM, although the BIOS correctly detect the 8GB.

I don't understand what "detect" means here. Either you have the RAM or you don't. I'm guessing what you mean instead is that TrueNAS complains about you not having enough RAM rather than not detecting it at all (you won't even POST if the system doesn't detect RAM it can use).

My guess for the complaint is most likely because storage/memory manufacturers and OS makers have mismatched definition of what a G is. In hardware world, 1G is 10^9 = 1'000'000'000 B whereas in OS world, 1 G is instead 2^30 = 1'073'741'824 B. It's a subtle difference, but one that does become significant the higher up you go in capacity.

 

[miked]

When I said the BIOS 'detects' the RAM, I meant that there wasn't any problems with either RAM stick - they show up.

I have ordered 2x 8GB and will update here once installed. Thanks for the advice

 

[Arwen]

I'd guess that the built in GPU of the AMD Ryzen 3 3200G has allocated some of the RAM, via a BIOS setting, which is too much. Thus, TrueNAS SCALE does not see 8GB minimum. Some BIOSes allow allocating up to 1GB to the built in GPU. But it's possible even 256MB or 512MB would be too much, when the base memory is only 8GBs.

 

[miked]

Thank you for the explanations, I've certainly learnt something. I swapped the 8GB of RAM for 16GB and it's all good now. Onwards!

 

[WN1X]

Glad to hear you got things working.