If nothing seems to work then I would consider RMA'ing the board. I highly doubt the CPU's IMC is the issue. Especially for a 'K' series chip, which is designed for overclocking. 

Fast RAM is mostly only really useful for computational tasks and in the case of an APU or if you are using intel's iGPU for gaming. Integrated graphics solutions share RAM with the system so the faster it is the faster the iGPU performance. If you have a dedicated GPU however it uses it's own dedicated vRAM instead so the fast RAM makes very little difference. In fact I would be surprised if it makes more than a 1 - 2 FPS difference, even going from 2133 to 3000. 

Now I'm curious to see what Wardog and Parsec say about the RAM speed 2133 vs 3000. If they feel running at 3000 will boost performance (FPS) even more than I will do whatever I can reasonably do, to make that happen.

In directx 12 titles yes, it's a really neat way to get some free FPS. If you are getting more FPS in DX 11 titles then I have no idea why that is happening, take it as a win 

I would only be concerned if your GPU is under performing with the iGPU disabled and performing as intended with it enabled. You can easily determine that by looking at some reviews on the GPU in the games this is happening in. So long as your FPS are more or less in line with the review numbers (assuming similar system config) you should be fine. If the titles are DX 12 however then that is exactly what you should be seeing. Intel's iGPUs have come a long way, not quite AMD APU good but certainly enough to give you a little bit of a boost in FPS in DX 12 games. 

So yes I have 2 sticks of RAM both 8g but here's the catch: I was building 2 gaming rigs and most info pointed to games only EVER needing 8g of RAM right now. So to save money, I split the 16g pair up and put 8 in mine and 8 in my girlfriend's computer. We each have just 1 stick (8G) in our A1 slot.

Everything is working fine now with no issues for this past week. I understand we'd get better bandwidth if we had 2 sticks so I may buy another 16g set and then put this pair back together and add the new 16g pair to the other empty PC.

For now let's assume I'm going to stick with solo 8g Sticks in the A1 slot on each of our PC's. I will try the settings that parsec mentioned but I believe the XMP setting was for 3066 speed and not 3000 which confused me a bit. I will take some photos tonight and post them to help make sure I'm trying to change the right settings.

I am on the latest BIOS version and I am using the Advanced settings.

For the record I was NOT trying to overclock as I don't know anything about overclocking really. I thought because my ram was 3000 speed that I could use this motherboard to take advantage of that speed RAM ...I didn't realize the only way was to overclock things. Showing my NEWBisness at overclocking. :(

Again I guess I am still curious if this is even worth it at all? If I get it to operate at 3000 (which is highly unlikely) will it be much of a speed increase for all the trouble? -Maybe I just let things go the way they are with 2133 and call it a day.

If you guys are like oh heck you'll see an 18% increase in performance on games, then sure I'll go for it.

On a side note, I am using a GeForce GTX 1050 ti mini card. It runs great. I tried enabling the onboard video in the motherboard for the hell of it, and noticed my FPS increased in my games from around 60 to about 75. Is this an expected result? I was quite pleased with that little find so long as I'm not killing functionality in other areas that I might not realize.

I would need help in setting up my OC parameters as I am a complete NEWB to overclocking. I thought I'd just be able to set the RAM to a higher setting and let the motherboard bios do the rest. Apparently I was mistaken.

The RAM works fine at the default 2133 setting. I will try to increase it by just 1 jump tonight and see what happens. If you can tell me what settings to configure manually I'm certainly willing to have a go at that as well.