Is this even possible? Ram timing

[Mitico]

Long story short, i had a lot of problems with my new pc, I was getting freezes whenever the cpu was under load or while gaming (even light gaming) and I had no clue of what the problem was. I even sent back the motherboard, in the end I tried to change the cas latency of the ram from 16 to 15 and until now I had 0 crashed, freezes or problems.. I mean, I know ram can cause problems, but it was this simple?

[Bombastinator]

?? Do you mean 15 to 16?

[ddennis002]

19 minutes ago, Mitico said:

Long story short, i had a lot of problems with my new pc, I was getting freezes whenever the cpu was under load or while gaming (even light gaming) and I had no clue of what the problem was. I even sent back the motherboard, in the end I tried to change the cas latency of the ram from 16 to 15 and until now I had 0 crashed, freezes or problems.. I mean, I know ram can cause problems, but it was this simple?

Was the Ram kit you have listed on the QVL for the motherboard?

[Mitico]

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

?? Do you mean 15 to 16?

No, the ram kit is cas latency 16 out of the box, so I set it to 15

[Bombastinator]

....so you fixed an error by making your ram vastly more expensive... nope. Shouldn’t happen.  Keep gaming.  Just don’t even so much as blow on your rig.

[Falkentyne]

3 minutes ago, Mitico said:

No, the ram kit is cas latency 16 out of the box, so I set it to 15

Setting Cas 15 probably changed some other secondaries or tertiaries from retraining.  Hard to know without your exact RAM and motherboard, since you gave us absolutely no information.

When you change primaries, the RAM has to retrain. 

[Mitico]

Just now, ddennis002 said:

Was the Ram kit you have listed on the QVL for the motherboard?

Not not exactly, but to be honest I bought the c16 instead of the 15 for mistake. This is the model Corsair CMK16GX4M2D3000C16

[Falkentyne]

1 minute ago, Mitico said:

Not not exactly, but to be honest I bought the c16 instead of the 15 for mistake. This is the model Corsair CMK16GX4M2D3000C16

 

What motherboard?
Intel or AMD? Model?  XMP enabled or disabled? 

[Bombastinator]

Just now, Falkentyne said:

Setting Cas 15 probably changed some other secondaries.  Hard to know without your exact RAM and motherboard, since you gave us absolutely no information.

When you change primaries, the RAM has to retrain. 

..Which means he’s running black box.  Also if the ram manufacturer thought their ram could take cas15 they would have sold it as such and made more money.  It’s probably right on the edge. Hence the no touchy touchy.

[Mitico]

Just now, Falkentyne said:

 

What motherboard?
Intel or AMD? Model?  XMP enabled or disabled? 

The motherboard is the gigabyte B450 Aorus elite with a Ryzen 5 2600, Xmp is enabld, I only changed latency from 16 to 15, and as for now it looks like it worked.. But cant understand why tbh

[Falkentyne]

I've seen issues with Corsair sticks running at XMP before on Gigabyte boards.  And some have reported issues on Asus as well.

An obscure google search with random information seems to pin the blame on Corsair's SPD flakiness.

If your RAM is not on the QVL however, you should expect these things to happen and there's not much you can do about it except set timings manually.  And setting timings manually require you know some basics about DDR4 settings.

[Bombastinator]

Just now, Mitico said:

The motherboard is the gigabyte B450 Aorus elite with a Ryzen 5 2600, Xmp is enabld, I only changed latency from 16 to 15, and as for now it looks like it worked.. But cant understand why tbh

@Falkentyne explained why.  Still shouldn’t have worked though.  Means the manufacturer messed up.  Unless they didn’t and the ram is just barely hanging in.

[ddennis002]

8 minutes ago, Falkentyne said:

Setting Cas 15 probably changed some other secondaries or tertiaries from retraining.  Hard to know without your exact RAM and motherboard, since you gave us absolutely no information.

When you change primaries, the RAM has to retrain. 

when running memory with higher frequencies there is a mode the memory will run in called gear down mode. Gear down mode  can only be ran when the CAS is set to even numbers. This is why you don't see a lot of kits that are odd Cas timings.  This mode helps stabilize secondary timings among other things, it also forces the memory to run 1T command rate.

 

When you manually move the CAS to a odd number the gear down mode gets disabled and a predefined spec is ran usually with higher sub timings and some kits and boards automatically force the memory into 2T command rate.

 

So by lowering the CAS the memory could be running with higher latency or on 2T command rate or both.

[Falkentyne]

11 minutes ago, ddennis002 said:

when running memory with higher frequencies there is a mode the memory will run in called gear down mode. Gear down mode  can only be ran when the CAS is set to even numbers. This is why you don't see a lot of kits that are odd Cas timings.  This mode helps stabilize secondary timings among other things, it also forces the memory to run 1T command rate.

 

When you manually move the CAS to a odd number the gear down mode gets disabled and a predefined spec is ran usually with higher sub timings and some kits and boards automatically force the memory into 2T command rate.

 

So by lowering the CAS the memory could be running with higher latency or on 2T command rate or both.

This should be labeled as best answer.

[Mitico]

42 minutes ago, ddennis002 said:

when running memory with higher frequencies there is a mode the memory will run in called gear down mode. Gear down mode  can only be ran when the CAS is set to even numbers. This is why you don't see a lot of kits that are odd Cas timings.  This mode helps stabilize secondary timings among other things, it also forces the memory to run 1T command rate.

 

When you manually move the CAS to a odd number the gear down mode gets disabled and a predefined spec is ran usually with higher sub timings and some kits and boards automatically force the memory into 2T command rate.

 

So by lowering the CAS the memory could be running with higher latency or on 2T command rate or both.

Thanks, I didn't knew this.. But to be honest as long as the system is stable, without freezes or crashes (before the pc was barely usable) can I keep it like this or there are risks? Since as for now, I cant get another ram kit, and I really dont want to get back to my old system which has an old amd 965 and 4 gb ram..

[ddennis002]

1 hour ago, Mitico said:

Thanks, I didn't knew this.. But to be honest as long as the system is stable, without freezes or crashes (before the pc was barely usable) can I keep it like this or there are risks? Since as for now, I cant get another ram kit, and I really dont want to get back to my old system which has an old amd 965 and 4 gb ram..

No risk, just not optimal.

 

If I were you I would do a little more troubleshooting on this.

I would try running the memory down to 2933Mhz which is the native speed the ryzen IMC is suppose to support load XMP but just bump the speed down and see what happens.

 

I build my latest pc in early march of this year and my situation was similar to yours, I would get random bluescreens after the first few days and over time it would get worse to the point that running no xmp and 2133Mhz on a 3000Mhz kit wouldn't even make it into windows. I tested different memory kit and issue presisted, I didn't have access to another board or CPU so I assumed it was the board and sent it in for RMA to ASUS they came back saying there was nothing wrong with the board go it back and still same issue, so I bought a 2200g and put it in and sure enough my memory was rocking 3000Mhz XMP no issue and booting into windows just fine. 

 

I RMA my 2700x and received word from AMD RMA that the IMC on the CPU was bad. All my hardware was bought brand new from newegg or amazon. So if you cannot narrow down the problem right now let it run if it gets worse I would try to get ahold of some parts to swap out.

[Mitico]

11 hours ago, ddennis002 said:

No risk, just not optimal.

 

If I were you I would do a little more troubleshooting on this.

I would try running the memory down to 2933Mhz which is the native speed the ryzen IMC is suppose to support load XMP but just bump the speed down and see what happens.

 

I build my latest pc in early march of this year and my situation was similar to yours, I would get random bluescreens after the first few days and over time it would get worse to the point that running no xmp and 2133Mhz on a 3000Mhz kit wouldn't even make it into windows. I tested different memory kit and issue presisted, I didn't have access to another board or CPU so I assumed it was the board and sent it in for RMA to ASUS they came back saying there was nothing wrong with the board go it back and still same issue, so I bought a 2200g and put it in and sure enough my memory was rocking 3000Mhz XMP no issue and booting into windows just fine. 

 

I RMA my 2700x and received word from AMD RMA that the IMC on the CPU was bad. All my hardware was bought brand new from newegg or amazon. So if you cannot narrow down the problem right now let it run if it gets worse I would try to get ahold of some parts to swap out.

I'll try at 2933 Mhz and see what will happen.. Btw I never had bluescreens or any error, first time the system would just shut off, but in a weird way, screen and peripherals would turn off but the fans in the pc still spin, only option was to restart it turning off from psu.. So I sent back the motherboard assuming that was the problem, even after replacing it I had problems, but a little bit different this time, as i said above, the system would freeze while the cpu was getting underload or gaming randomly and even here the only option was to restart the pc. Esclusing every component, other than cpu (had no way of testing it) I tried again to replace the motherboard, first time it would not even boot into windows, but that was a bios problem (looks like you cant get a version above F30 on B450 gigabyte motherboards if you have a 2nd gen ryzen cpu), after fixing that bios issues I still had the freeze problem, so I tried lowering the cas latency of the ram, and so far it works..

[ddennis002]

12 hours ago, Mitico said:

I'll try at 2933 Mhz and see what will happen.. Btw I never had bluescreens or any error, first time the system would just shut off, but in a weird way, screen and peripherals would turn off but the fans in the pc still spin, only option was to restart it turning off from psu.. So I sent back the motherboard assuming that was the problem, even after replacing it I had problems, but a little bit different this time, as i said above, the system would freeze while the cpu was getting underload or gaming randomly and even here the only option was to restart the pc. Esclusing every component, other than cpu (had no way of testing it) I tried again to replace the motherboard, first time it would not even boot into windows, but that was a bios problem (looks like you cant get a version above F30 on B450 gigabyte motherboards if you have a 2nd gen ryzen cpu), after fixing that bios issues I still had the freeze problem, so I tried lowering the cas latency of the ram, and so far it works..

I would try running Memtest over night and see if it comes back with any errors. Things like this can be hard to track down, it was a few months before my issue got so bad that it was able to be diagnosed. 

 

Its almost like an issue with my car I had a while back, it would buck and loose power and was being a gas hog but no check engine light so i was thinking it was something that the computer in the car didn't have a sensor on and after doing some troubleshooting for days I was no closer. Im not a person that like to go out and just buy part after part until I nail the right one in the head so I waited a good 6 months with the car still running poorly then one day the check engine light came on and I read the code it was Mass air flow sensor performance, I cleaned the sensor and it got a bit better, but I ended up having to replace it and it ran fine after that.

 

Keep your head up and don't let it get you to you, give it some time and try to troubleshoot the best you can and you will get it figured out.