RAM Frequency Not Matching Description

[Swordbreaker925]

First time PC builder here.

I recently bought four sticks of 3200MHz RAM. I haven't yet tested it in-game, but when the computer isnt running anything except for stuff like Steam, i'm only getting a frequency of about 1070MHz. Does RAM frequency fluctuate based on load or is it simply not functioning as it should?

For reference, i'm using Corsair's iCUE to view my system info like temperatures, frequency, fan speed, etc. since my RAM, PSU, and AIO Cooler are all Corsair.

Edited January 4, 2020 by LogicalDrm
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[Skiiwee29]

ICUE displays it properly as DDR, basically your actual frequency, which is 50% of what is advertised. So you take 1070 and x2 and you get, effectively 2133mhz which is the base standard frequency of RAM. You need to go into your BIOS and enable XMP or DOCP depending on which platform you're on. This will put your RAM at the frequency and timings they are advertised to be at. This works 99% of the time, but rarely you may have to tweak settings or up a voltage or something to get it stable if you get any crashes. 

[Jurrunio]

You're running without XMP/DOCP? Also the software you're reading shows the number half of the data rate, so with XMP/DOCP profile you should see around 1600MHz (The board is raising bclk to 100.3/100.4, so everything is slightly faster than it should)

[Swordbreaker925]

11 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

ICUE displays it properly as DDR, basically your actual frequency, which is 50% of what is advertised. So you take 1070 and x2 and you get, effectively 2133mhz which is the base standard frequency of RAM. You need to go into your BIOS and enable XMP or DOCP depending on which platform you're on. This will put your RAM at the frequency and timings they are advertised to be at. This works 99% of the time, but rarely you may have to tweak settings or up a voltage or something to get it stable if you get any crashes. 

Thanks! I enabled XMP I in BIOS and now iCUE is showing my RAM frequency at 1600 (x2 = 3200). So looks like that fixed it!