z790 pg lightning strange issues.

Most of the time, when the computer is turned on, it will take anywhere from 5-8 seconds before the ASROCK logo will appear. Then the spinning wheel showing Windows 11 will appear and the boot time is acceptable. However, once in a while, the ASROCK logo will appear after .5 - 1 second and will load Windows so quickly that the circle doesn't even appear. Full boot into Windows in <2.5 seconds. I'm assuming that is how it should always be running.

BIOS was updated and is running default settings.

I had an issue where most of my games were crashing. I pulled up the crash reports and it seemed like it was RAM related. I took out one of the sticks of ram and just left one in. Now the crashing was different. The error codes were different. I did some digging and found out I have to run the games as administrator to get them to work. These games include Black Ops 2, CS2, Fortnite, and Cyberpunk 2077. I have to run STEAM as admin to get any of the Steam games to work. If I don't they do not have access to some file(s) that they need to run. Something has been set to needing admin permission to run, something that the games need to work.

I put back in the second stick of RAM and tried running the games as admin but they still crashed. So I pulled the second stick back out and they work again. Sometimes Black Ops 3 will just give me a black screen and not load but I try it again and it will work.

I'm not certain if the second stick of RAM is bad or if it's the motherboard or XMP settings or some other BIOS setting. In the past, on several other computers, I have turned on XMP and noticed my computer ran MUCH faster. Boot times and everything was much quicker. However, the games ran like crap. Frame rates were awful and basically, all games ran terribly. This was not on this computer but on multiple other computers I've had (three others so far, to be exact). I always had to turn XMP back off to get the games to work. I'm just mentioning this as I don't like having to turn on XMP as it has always screwed everything up. I believe fast boot is currently on but it doens't seem to matter.

I tested the power supply at one point and all voltages were in range. I have seen others who had the slow power on to bios have had luck in changing out the power supply, even a couple that it would sometimes work right like mine is doing. Could the power supply test fine at one moment but still be bad sometimes?

I don't know exactly what to try now. I would like the computer to always boot and run fast. When it boots quickly, everything in Windows runs much faster as well. I don't know how to fix having to run the games as admin to get them to work. I did reinstall Windows 11 at one point, but that was before removing the second stick of RAM, before I found out that either that stick is bad or having two sticks plugged in causes issues.

Any ideas on what I should try would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!

Hi m8, hope you fixed your issue. If not, could you please provide the BIOS version, as well as the video card installed. You can also try, when having only one RAM stick installed, to swap between the two sticks, try with one of them first, then with the other one and see if it causes any issues, if not, then most likely having them both installed causes issues.