Motherboard ram support clarifications

[SkySinclair]

So I want to buy an aorus elite (or pro) b450 for my ryzen 5 3600 

 

It says ryzen 5 3600 max ram speed support is 3200mhz so for best ram to cpu performance I must buy that 3200mhz ram right? 

 

But the aorus elite only supports 2933mhz but upto 3600mhz when overclocked (says so in their website) 

 

My question is do I simply have to OC the Mobo? When I have a 3200mhz ram? Or tell me your thoughts 

 

 

I don't have a pc yet Im still planning which parts to buy

 

I have looked at the msi tomahawk max b450 but aorus is fine

 

 

[synthaxe404]

Quote

But the aorus elite only supports 2933mhz but upto 3600mhz when overclocked (says so in their website) 

I believe they are referring to the RAM overclocking. To answer your question, no, you overclock the RAM and not the motherboard. 

[Chris Pratt]

3200Mhz is the the supported JDEC standard, so anything over that is an overclock. That's what XMP profiles are for, and while it's technically an overclock, applying XMP profiles is so rudimentary at this point, that it just works 99.9999% of the time.

 

For Zen 2, the ideal RAM clockspeed is 3600MHz, since it should be 1:1 with the infinity fabric clock (FCLK), and 1800MHz is the highest the FCLK on Zen 2 goes without overclocking that. That may seem confusing, since I said they should be 1:1, but remember that DDR means double data rate, so the actual real clock of 3600Mhz RAM is 1800MHz (1800x2=3600). You can of course run slower RAM, like 3200MHz, but you're leaving performance on the table.

[SkySinclair]

synthaxe404
thanks i was wondering too .. because i wasnt sure which is supposed to be overclocked

BUT.. if you say we only OC the ram not Mobo then what if the max speed of that ram is already 3200mhz which is inlined to the ryzen 5 3600 max ram support speed. then what did 3200mhz OC mean in gigabytes website for the elite  b450 mobo

 

thanks

 

 

 

[SkySinclair]

Chris Pratt thats very technical i never knew DDR was the double of its original speed thanks ... tho i didnt understand the first paragraph yet

[Chris Pratt]

1 hour ago, SkySinclair said:

Chris Pratt thats very technical i never knew DDR was the double of its original speed thanks ... tho i didnt understand the first paragraph yet

Note: use @ to reply, or it won't notify the user. I just happened upon this.

 

Sorry. There's a lot of jargon in the PC world. JEDEC is a standards body that, among other things, is responsible for the DDR RAM standards. According to the standard, now, DDR4 can operate up to 3200MHz. For a long while, the highest was actually 2666MHz, but RAM manufacturers were still selling kits all day that clocked much higher. Even if you buy some 4400MHz kit or something it will run at the JEDEC standard by default, which for depending on the mobo and CPU will either be 2666MHz or 3200MHz.

 

Since JEDEC is very slow to adopt the higher speeds that manufacturers can produce, Intel took it up themselves to create a way to basically auto OC the RAM over the JEDEC standard, which they called XMP (eXtreme Memory Profile). AMD has its own version called DOCP, but XMP sort of took, like Kleenex, to generically refer to these auto OC profiles.

 

in any case, when you apply the profile, you then get the speeds the RAM manufactures advertised (assuming the board and CPU's IMC, or integrated memory controller) can handle it. Extremely fast RAM still sometimes has issues, but usually up to 3600MHz can without issue across the board.

[SkySinclair]

@Chris Pratt Thank for mentioning using @

 

Thanks for the explanation.. 

So what would be the move here assuming I already have an

 

aorus elite b450 

Which supports 2933mhz max But upto 3600mhz (oc) 

 

And

 

A 3200mhz 16gb 2x8gb ram

 

Do i just goto Mobo bios and OC my Mobo to reach 3200mhz ram speed? 

 

[Chris Pratt]

You just have to enable XMP/DOCP. It will run at the rated speed of the RAM then. If you only have 3200Mhz, then that's what it will run at. It's not going to magically go to 3600Mhz.

[SkySinclair]

@Chris Pratt

 Thanks ill do my own research about xmp right away.. Much appreciated