A320 Motherboard Ram MHz Limit

[xnnamles]

Hello guys I have an A320m pro e Motherboard and i wanted to know can i buy 2x8gb 3200mhz ram.

I have heard that a320 motherboards support till 2666mhz so i want to be sure in internet site says ddr4 memory till 3200(OC) but i wanted to ask because its an a320 motherboard.

[xnnamles]

1 minute ago, NZgamer said:

Yes, it will work. Make sure you enable XMP

I need to update my bios i think because it says xmp not supported ?

[mariushm]

On AMD it's sometimes called DOCP or something like that.

Also, as far as I know, A320 chipset is supposed to allow you up to 2933 Mhz, but I guess it's possible that restriction was relaxed... I don't know, I haven't kept up with news about this super budget chipset.

2666 was the limit for those processors that weren't supposed to be overclockable like Athlon 200ge or something like that.

[xnnamles]

16 hours ago, NZgamer said:

Where'd you read that? It says on the motherboard website it supports 3200Mhz ram via OC

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-A320M-E/specifications/

its not asus. MSI A320 PRO E

[xnnamles]

2 hours ago, NZgamer said:

Oh well, Asus was the first that popped up on my google search. Always a good idea to include the brand name in your post.

 

Either way the MSI A320 supports 3200Mhz via OC.

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/A320M-PRO-E/Specification

Im not sure. If i get 3200mhz ram with this mobo and xmp is not supported in bios? What should i do then? Its gonna run the ram at  2133Mhz.

Is there any connection with Bios Update and A-XMP? 

[mariushm]

3 minutes ago, xnnamles said:

Im not sure. If i get 3200mhz ram with this mobo and xmp is not supported in bios? What should i do then? Its gonna run the ram at  2133Mhz.

Is there any connection with Bios Update and A-XMP? 

If XMP (or DOCP or whatever name is used) is not supported  you can still use Aida64 or CPU-Z to list the SPD presets stored inside the ram sticks and write them on a sheet of paper and then go into bios and manually enter those parameters in the bios. If the bios gives you the ability to enter numbers manually.

The sticks will have presets for intermediary steps, like 2133 , 2400 , 2666, 2800 , 2933, 3000, 3200 etc ...  you can just pick something like 2666 or 3000.

You also don't have to enter those exact numbers, you could take a profile for a frequency and "relax" those timings, loose them up.  For example, if the stick says it can do 2666 with 16-16-18 nothing stops you from manually configuring it to 18-18-18 ... it just means you're giving the sticks an extra 2 clock cycles to be ready for the motherboard ... the stick says it can do in 16 through the profile , and may finish in less than 16 clocks for 99.9999% of the cases , but if you give it 18 you know for sure 100% of the time it's gonna be done in 18.

 

A320 chipset was not supposed to allow overclocking, and was only supposed to allow setting the memory to what the processor officially supports ... ex like Athlon 200ge officially supports maximum 2666 Mhz, you were not supposed to be able to configure memory above that threshold.

Also depending on sticks and single rank/dual rank, motherboard may or may not even allow that much : https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/athlon/200ge#Memory_controller

For Athlon 200ge , on an A320 board (max 2 sticks, because A320 has this limitation) officially you can do only 2400 Mhz or 2666 Mhz depending on single rank or dual rank sticks :

 

Other processors may officially support 2933 Mhz or even more ... for example see Ryzen 2600 where AMD officially guarantees 2933 as long as the pcb is using 6 layers, not the 4 layers typical of cheaper boards.

 

Ryzen 2600 :  https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_5/2600

 

[xnnamles]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

If XMP (or DOCP or whatever name is used) is not supported  you can still use Aida64 or CPU-Z to list the SPD presets stored inside the ram sticks and write them on a sheet of paper and then go into bios and manually enter those parameters in the bios. If the bios gives you the ability to enter numbers manually.

The sticks will have presets for intermediary steps, like 2133 , 2400 , 2666, 2800 , 2933, 3000, 3200 etc ...  you can just pick something like 2666 or 3000.

You also don't have to enter those exact numbers, you could take a profile for a frequency and "relax" those timings, loose them up.  For example, if the stick says it can do 2666 with 16-16-18 nothing stops you from manually configuring it to 18-18-18 ... it just means you're giving the sticks an extra 2 clock cycles to be ready for the motherboard ... the stick says it can do in 16 through the profile , and may finish in less than 16 clocks for 99.9999% of the cases , but if you give it 18 you know for sure 100% of the time it's gonna be done in 18.

 

A320 chipset was not supposed to allow overclocking, and was only supposed to allow setting the memory to what the processor officially supports ... ex like Athlon 200ge officially supports maximum 2666 Mhz, you were not supposed to be able to configure memory above that threshold.

Also depending on sticks and single rank/dual rank, motherboard may or may not even allow that much : https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/athlon/200ge#Memory_controller

For Athlon 200ge , on an A320 board (max 2 sticks, because A320 has this limitation) officially you can do only 2400 Mhz or 2666 Mhz depending on single rank or dual rank sticks :

 

Other processors may officially support 2933 Mhz or even more ... for example see Ryzen 2600 where AMD officially guarantees 2933 as long as the pcb is using 6 layers, not the 4 layers typical of cheaper boards.

 

Ryzen 2600 :  https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_5/2600

 

Btw my MSI A320 PRO E Motherboard supports ram speed till 3200(OC) but my question was what if i cant use xmp, can i manually set the values like 3200 CL16 18 18 36 ?

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, xnnamles said:

Btw my MSI A320 PRO E Motherboard supports ram speed till 3200(OC) but my question was what if i cant use xmp, can i manually set the values like 3200 CL16 18 18 36 ?

If the MSI board is similar to my Asus, then yes, you can manually select memory frequency.

[mariushm]

if the board allows you to set timings  (and probably also memory voltage, because you may need 1.35v instead 1.2v for high frequencies) then yeah.

 

also note that (OC)  after 3200 and if you go on the msi website there's a ¹  after the line and a subnote ... read the fineprint

 

 

Now what processor do you have ... your profile says 2600x , so zen+ so clicking on see supported memory , then click on Memory by Rx-2x00  (Pinnacle Ridge)

Now pay attention to that list ...  I sorted it by the frequency they tested (the default SPD preset is the first row in the column).

Note how the huge majority of sticks they tested and achieved high frequencies are SINGLE RANK sticks.

These are typically more expensive sticks ... pretty much only 4 GB sticks are guaranteed to be single rank, and probably 60% of the 8 GB sticks are single rank, the rest being dual rank... but cheap sticks tend to be dual rank...

On this list, pretty much only 16 GB sticks are dual rank because there's no other way of making 16 GB sticks, can't make 16 GB single rank sticks.

 

So unless you are 100% sure you buy Single Rank sticks, even though the motherboard says 3200 (OC), it's not guaranteed you'll achieve 3200 Mhz.... but you could do 3000 or 2933 or 2666 Mhz, or something less.

 

Also worth pointing out that the list is not comprehensive, isn't meant to contain all possible sticks available on market, and it's often not updated especially for budget boards, so through bios updates, the motherboard may over time get a wider support for memory sticks.

 

Click in picture to zoom it , or just go on msi website

 

 

[xnnamles]

 im gonna get 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX LP Black DDR4-3200 DIMM CL16 Dual Kit and manually gonna set them to 3000MHz till i get a new mobo.