Memory Speed Compatibility, CPU or Motherboard Based?

[erik3135]

I bought an MSI B450 Gaming Plus board a few years ago along with a Ryzen 3 1200 CPU overclocked to 3.9ghz and overvolted (1.45v) with plans to upgrade the CPU later to a R5 _600 once it died. Now at the time I wasn't aware of how important memory speed was for Ryzen so I bought a 2133mhz kit, I ended up getting it to overclock to 2666mhz at CL18 which I have found to give me decent performance. 

 

Since my old Ryzen 3 CPU refuses to die, I'm at the point where I need to upgrade as Ryzen 5000 will be the last gen supported by my B450. 

 

My problem comes down to the memory, since I'm now going to be spending more than I ever thought I would on a CPU I would hate to bottleneck it with the 2666mhz RAM. I was looking at THIS for memory (G.SKILL Trident Z RGB 3600mhz CL18) but when I look at my motherboard's specifications it only shows support for up to 3466mhz. Now I don't know if it only supports that as it has not yet released the BIOS update for Ryzen 5000 or if the board really wont support it. 

 

From the research I've done I've seen people say it only depends on the CPU, that it depends on the motherboard and that it depends on both, understandably I am confused.

 

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[Light-Yagami]

If mobo supports 3466, that's it. I doubt a B450 would do any higher or even - be able to do 3466 reliably. Imho, a 3200mhz kit with CL14 is the faster you'll get away with. Or - buy a new MoBo.

 

Sweet spot for new ryzen chips is 3600mhz CL16, but it won't gain you any appreciable performance, unless you run a very high end GPU and you game at 300fps+. So you're fine

[Jumballi]

If money is such an issue, just don't upgrade the ram. Sure you leave performance on the table, but lets say you decide to upgrade again in a short year or two, you might be forced to buy ddr5 ram, now you're buying ram twice for 10-20% performance more. The question you should be asking is if the loss of performance is something you can't live with, especially since you can still use your old ram and see for yourself.

 

On ryzen I would say that it can run anything the motherboard says it can run, with the CPU being the limiting factor. I once had a motherboard that easily ram at 4000mhz, and I got some ddr4 3600mhz that ran fine on an intel system. But those two together with a ryzen processor couldn't get passed 3000mhz, which sucks knowing that my cpu ran within spec but I still lost the lottery I was guaranteed to win.

[erik3135]

I should have mentioned, I only have 8GB of ram right now and when running CAD software and some games I am definitely starting to notice that I would benefit from 16GB. So the dilemma here is, do I double down on the mediocre ram and buy 2 more 4GB modules or buy 2 new 8GB modules at 3200mhz as Light-Yagami suggested. 

 

I appreciate the help, and I think I will go and find a good deal on some 3200mhz CL16 memory.