My PC reboots when setting FLCK to 1800MHx

RockiNeedsTechTipa · October 20, 2020

Hello. So recently I have build my first PC. When I first booted my PC i saw that one of the RAM sticks wasn't properly installed. So I turned off my PC and my power supply and took of the glass panel. When I took the RAM stick out I saw a spark appear for a second between the 2 memory sticks. Frightened that I just destroyed my PC I quickly put back the memory stick and turned on my PC. And it booted to BIOS. I then turned my memory clock speed to 3600MHz without setting my FLCK to 1800MHz (it was probably at auto) and downloaded Windows. The next day I updated the BIOS and after that I turned my DOCP profile to 3600MHz. With DOCP on my PC would boot to Windows and after a couple of seconds would reboot (without a blue screen). So I was tinkering a bit and I found out that I can set the RAM speed to 3600 MHz with FLCK set to 1600MHz. I then found out that I can set the memory to 3466MHz and my FLCK to 1733MHz. I asked around on Reddit about this issue and someone (the same guy that helped me set up my RAM to 3466MHz and FLCK 1733MHz) mentioned that because of the spark I could have damaged something on my PC, probably the chip's memory controller. So now I'm freaking out a bit thinking that I could damaged my first PC.

My PC's specs are:

**CPU** | [AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor]

**Motherboard** | [Asus TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS (WI-FI) Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard]

**Memory** | [G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory]

**Storage** | [Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive]

**Video Card** | [Asus GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB DUAL EVO OC Video Card]

**Case** | [Asus TUF Gaming GT301 ATX Mid Tower Case]

**Power Supply** | [Asus ROG Strix 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply]

I hope that someone can help me with that. I'm fine with my RAM running at 3466MHz, but what frightens me the most is that if I destroyed my PC with that spark.

GhostRoadieBL · October 20, 2020

If the pc runs fine at 3466mhz you probably have no problems with the memory controller, most likely it is just not a great one which is causing the limited top end speed.

The spark would have been an issue if the pc no longer posted or is crashing at every speed.

You can always run memcheck

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-check-your-pc-memory-problems-windows-10

It's built into windows 10 and will let you know if something is wrong

RockiNeedsTechTipa · October 20, 2020

1 hour ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

If the pc runs fine at 3466mhz you probably have no problems with the memory controller, most likely it is just not a great one which is causing the limited top end speed.

The spark would have been an issue if the pc no longer posted or is crashing at every speed.

You can always run memcheck

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-check-your-pc-memory-problems-windows-10

It's built into windows 10 and will let you know if something is wrong

I already ran membench86 a couple of times. The last time I ran it was with the memory frequency set to 3466MHz and it had no errors. But I'll also try memcheck just in case.

Well that's great if the spark is nothing to worry about. It doesn't appear again, which is great and my PC runs perfectly. But I'll write to you guys again if something happens. Thank you.

RockiNeedsTechTipa · December 6, 2020

On 10/20/2020 at 6:28 PM, GhostRoadieBL said:

If the pc runs fine at 3466mhz you probably have no problems with the memory controller, most likely it is just not a great one which is causing the limited top end speed.

The spark would have been an issue if the pc no longer posted or is crashing at every speed.

You can always run memcheck

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-check-your-pc-memory-problems-windows-10

It's built into windows 10 and will let you know if something is wrong

Hello one again! I have a question about the spark thing. Can that spark damage the dimm slots that I'm not using on my PC? I haven't tried testing them by reinstalling my ram sticks into those slots because I'm a bit afraid that something will happen. I'm planning on getting the same set of ram and I think it wouldn't be fun to find out at the end that I can't use all of my dimm slots.