ram DOCP/XMP causing errors in RAM

bretty · August 23, 2021

Hi All,

My first post here!

So I built a machine earlier this year, for work, gaming and VR.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor (£699.98 @ Scan.co.uk)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler (£89.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard (£291.56 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory (£586.53 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card: PNY GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB XLR8 Gaming EPIC-X RGB Video Card (£2082.84 @ SmartTeck.co.uk)
Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 ATX Mid Tower Case (£119.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Asus 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Total: £3870.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-08-23 13:53 BST+0100

The problem I'm having is recently I've been getting BSODs, usually with stop codes like MEMORY_MANAGEMENT or ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY or KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR. So I decided to run a bunch of RAM tests.

Tests

Ran all memory sticks together with Karhu RAM Tester, and raised errors.
Ran each memory stick individually with Memtest86, and all but one passed.
Ran the 3 passed memory sticks together with Karhu RAM Tester and after several hours got a BSOD.

Going back to the drawing board after that last test failed, I considered the DOCP settings, I have them set up like so:

https://imgur.com/a/f6XMpG9

Just using the default DOCP settings, as the ram is rated as 3600.

I turned off the DOCP settings and re-ran the Karhu RAM Tester with all 4 sticks of RAM back in (as it seems more rigorous than the Memtest86 test), and after 17 hours and 9214% coverage, it's found 0 errors.

So, my question is where to go from here?

I assume the RAM itself is good, but the DOCP settings aren't playing ball somehow? In which case how do I get the speed advertised on the RAM, but also system stability? My motherboard is on the QVL list for the RAM (https://www.gskill.com/qvl/165/326/1562840280/F4-3600C16Q-64GTZNC-Qvl), so I don't understand why I'm having so much trouble.

Another random point, which may be related, but probably isn't. I've noticed that the RAM RGB bottom half often flickers when running some kind of animation, all the sticks seem to do this, with differing frequency. I'm less bothered by this as it's purely aesthetics, but still a bit annoying. The weird thing is, this only seems to happen when it's running an animation via Asus Armoury Crate, if it's left to it's default rainbow animation it works fine. Which makes me think it's a software problem rather than an hardware problem. (Video of this issue here: https://imgur.com/a/f6XMpG9)

I've also updated the BIOS to the latest stable

Thanks!