What is the max freq of RAM that Zen 1 is compatible with?

[420inPortland]

 

Thinking f upgrading my 32g of 2444Mhz RAM since the price for DDR4 has dropped and wanna do it since i plan to be on Ryzen for many yrs to come, and need to get in there bbefore the price creeps up again. I think i recal that its 3600Mhz max for 1st gen? I have an 1800X right now, but will upgrade CPU later, and wanna get the fastest kit i can thats compatible with my current chip. 

 

Thanks in advance.

[Levent]

6 minutes ago, 420inPortland said:

I think i recal that its 3600Mhz max for 1st gen?

Not gonna happen. I would say you would be lucky to get 3200mhz on first gen ryzen. 3200 was possible on Zen+/2XXX, 3800 is possible on Zen2/3XXX, I am not sure how much Zen3 can handle. Try overclocking instead of wasting money on rams, hate to say it but ryzen dram calculator gives you a somewhat easy entry into ram overclocking. That being said, you can overclock better than what ryzen dram calculator claims you can.

[Ryuikko]

This is what I found on the ryzen website. The most you can probably get is 3000 with tuning in the bios but I'm not entirely sure.

[Zando_]

7 minutes ago, 420inPortland said:

I think i recal that its 3600Mhz max for 1st gen?

2933Mhz. With a well binned chip and specifically selected RAM kits IIRC higher was possible. But for almost everyone the reasonable max was 2933Mhz. So usually a 3000MHz kit with decent timings, set it to 2933 in the BIOS, speed isn't far enough off 3000 to bother the XMP timings and sub-timings.

[BondiBlue]

11 minutes ago, 420inPortland said:

I think i recal that its 3600Mhz max for 1st gen?

Definitely not. My R7 2700 can't run my RAM at anything higher than 3000, and I've worked with a Ryzen 5 1400 that simply wouldn't go past 2933 at all. 

[SupaKomputa]

i would just overclock it to 2999mhz easily rather buying something new. almost all my ram when i use zen 1 can be overclocked.

[cmndr]

No official limit but in my experience I could get my cheap DDR4-2800 RAM to ~3200MHz (or higher) with my Zen 2 CPU that I couldn't get much past 2933MHz on Zen1. A different DDR4-3200 kit that hits 3733 won't go any faster than the cheaper/older kit on Zen1.

The upside - there's not THAT big of a benefit of faster RAM outside of edge cases.
One thing that DOES make a difference - dual rank RAM. This does offer a nice uplift. Most older 32GB kits are dual rank.

 

Also, if you're concerned about performance, swapping to something like a 5600x would be a bigger jump than swapping the RAMx. Like 5-10x bigger.

[RONOTHAN##]

Sounds like I'm one of the lucky ones that managed to get 3200MHz to work just by enabling XMP my my 1st gen Ryzen chip. 3200MHz is the max register on the CPU, so unless you've got a good CPU and a motherboard with BCLK OC support there's no possible way of getting anything higher than 3200MHz to work. 

 

though as other said, you'd be better off overclocking your RAM than buying a new kit. If you want to buy something new, you'd be better off upgrading your CPU instead. 

[420inPortland]

EDIT:   OK , thanks for the many replies. I guess though from all the suggestions to upgrade other componants that I should have been more clear on the reason for upgrading the RAM. I Usually keep my  same platform for around 10yrs at a time. I am thinking of getting upgraded RAM NOW, because by the time I would be able to afford new CPU/GPU,  etc (say 3-4yrs), I expect DDR5 to be the standard and dont wanna be stuck running the RAM i currently have, nor do i  wanna have to pay out the nose in the future when I can get those other componants upgraded, and DDR4 is gonna be oudated and can only be found at extortionist pricing cuz its old. Which is why I'm trying to figure out what will work with my 1st gen ryzen NOW, and that i can carry forward for when i can get a 3-4th gen ryzen in a few yrs when they become dirst cheap. I am disabled and don't work anymore, so cost is a MAJOR limitation for me. I have overclocked my CPU to 4g all core, but am not really familiar with overclocking ram. Though if ppl can point me at the right resources id love to overclock my current ram while i look for some new ram. I saw some  teamgroup 3600Mhz 32g kits for $99.

 

I only spent $500 building my PC in the first place, about 3yrs ago. Specs if anyone is intersted, all used parts but the MB:

1800X, 32g 2444 DDR4, Gigybyte X-470 Gaming Ultra, RX 580 Red Devil Watercooled open loop, same for CPU, 980 SSD 500g, 1tb Sata XPG M.2 SSD, and some more drives.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

8 hours ago, Levent said:

Not gonna happen. I would say you would be lucky to get 3200mhz on first gen ryzen. 3200 was possible on Zen+/2XXX, 3800 is possible on Zen2/3XXX, I am not sure how much Zen3 can handle. Try overclocking instead of wasting money on rams, hate to say it but ryzen dram calculator gives you a somewhat easy entry into ram overclocking. That being said, you can overclock better than what ryzen dram calculator claims you can.

Zen2 and above is just skys the limit, at that point its more of what your rams can do rather than the cpu, although harder to run ics like samsung b die may have issues with high speeds (4500+), fclk is the main limiter since sync fclk is ideal for performance, though you may be able to mitigate the performance loss by just brute speed (800mhz+ over 1:1), usually not worth it on zen3 and especially not worth it on apus with their ridicolous fclk capability

 

Zen and zen+ have terrible imc but looking at the 4th post on the Hwbot micron rev e thread apparently someone got 3600 for daily in a 4x8 config on micron rev e, though ill just assume thats high volt/high bin or both, could just be micron rev e being really easy to run but i doubt itd be that easy on the imc

 

 

For ram oc just look at thaiphoon burner for your ram ic and you can look that ics oc results on the internet, theres usually gonna be a reddit thread or 2 on it, i have mostly dismissed ryzen dram calculator as using other ppls results is usually a reliable way to get your rams up to speed (example using hwbot record for my extreem dark ddr2 to get it to initially 1480 7-9-9-10 2.2v but now 1520 7-9-6-9 2.38v after extra tweaking) though it may also be a good reference, 1.5v is a good guideline for a safe volt for most ics and running w/o fan over the rams, only go higher if you have an ic that can handle extra volt (like the aformentioned rev e), though youll hit cooling or scaling limits before going into somewhat dangerous volt territory

[trevb0t]

To be clear, with all chipsets this will be determined by the motherboard that you use.

So if you wanted this info, you'd go to the manufacturer website and look at memory support under your unit.

 

The simple answer is that most boards for Zen+ were at 2999.

If your current kit is decent, 2666 should be easily attainable, and the performance difference will be very minimal between that and max. 

 

If you wanted to upgrade RAM to prepare for a coming CPU upgrade, you could buy 3600. It will just not operate at 3600MHZ when you're using the 1800X.

[420inPortland]

On 6/14/2022 at 6:59 AM, trevb0t said:

To be clear, with all chipsets this will be determined by the motherboard that you use.

So if you wanted this info, you'd go to the manufacturer website and look at memory support under your unit.

 

The simple answer is that most boards for Zen+ were at 2999.

If your current kit is decent, 2666 should be easily attainable, and the performance difference will be very minimal between that and max. 

 

If you wanted to upgrade RAM to prepare for a coming CPU upgrade, you could buy 3600. It will just not operate at 3600MHZ when you're using the 1800X.

Yes, thank you. I've been trying to figure out if i could go 3600 and still use it now, or whether i was stuck at 3200 if i wanted to be able to use it with my current setup. Again, i'm not real familiar with OC anyway, and have never OC any Ram. Maybe worst case I get the 3600 and throttle it to 3200 perhaps, idk? I had also seemed to remember hearing at one time that 3600 is the max for the infinity fabric on Ryzen?

[trevb0t]

On 6/16/2022 at 5:49 PM, 420inPortland said:

Yes, thank you. I've been trying to figure out if i could go 3600 and still use it now, or whether i was stuck at 3200 if i wanted to be able to use it with my current setup. Again, i'm not real familiar with OC anyway, and have never OC any Ram. Maybe worst case I get the 3600 and throttle it to 3200 perhaps, idk? I had also seemed to remember hearing at one time that 3600 is the max for the infinity fabric on Ryzen?

Just pop your BIOS menu open, and try turning your RAM speed to 2999. It's as simple as that. If it's not crashing, then you're successfully overclocking, basically.

 

I mean zen 2 maxed in the low 5000s for potential RAM capability. So I doubt the infinity fabric is the issue. It's a motherboard standard. If you go buy a B series intel motherboard vs a Z series, the RAM limitations are often different. Same with certain B450 series MOBOs. 

 

But yes, you can put 3600Mhz RAM in your setup. The system will throttle it to whatever the BIOS is set to (which would likely be 2999mhz.)

 

Buying RAM now on a good sale is fine, because even if you ditch Ryzen entirely that RAM is still good for 12th gen Intel, and who knows on the next gen for both companies. That said, you're likely only going to notice a theoretical 6-10% performance difference from your current kit with what it's paired with.

[420inPortland]

On 6/21/2022 at 8:33 AM, trevb0t said:

Just pop your BIOS menu open, and try turning your RAM speed to 2999. It's as simple as that. If it's not crashing, then you're successfully overclocking, basically.

 

I mean zen 2 maxed in the low 5000s for potential RAM capability. So I doubt the infinity fabric is the issue. It's a motherboard standard. If you go buy a B series intel motherboard vs a Z series, the RAM limitations are often different. Same with certain B450 series MOBOs. 

 

But yes, you can put 3600Mhz RAM in your setup. The system will throttle it to whatever the BIOS is set to (which would likely be 2999mhz.)

 

Buying RAM now on a good sale is fine, because even if you ditch Ryzen entirely that RAM is still good for 12th gen Intel, and who knows on the next gen for both companies. That said, you're likely only going to notice a theoretical 6-10% performance difference from your current kit with what it's paired with.

So i got a kit of Teamgroup 3600Mhz 32g. I have managed to get it to 2933. Is this gonna be the limit with a 1st gen Ryzen then? Is there any point of trying to use the Ryzen DRAM calculator to try to push up to the 3600Mhz the kit is rated for, or will i just need to wait to get a later gen CPU? I tried to enable the out of the box XMP as well as using the board bios to push past the 2933Mhz incrementally, but  it would not POST. Just wanted to confirm I'm at the top speed this can do with my 1800X. thanks in advance.

[trevb0t]

On 7/6/2022 at 7:38 PM, 420inPortland said:

So i got a kit of Teamgroup 3600Mhz 32g. I have managed to get it to 2933. Is this gonna be the limit with a 1st gen Ryzen then? Is there any point of trying to use the Ryzen DRAM calculator to try to push up to the 3600Mhz the kit is rated for, or will i just need to wait to get a later gen CPU? I tried to enable the out of the box XMP as well as using the board bios to push past the 2933Mhz incrementally, but  it would not POST. Just wanted to confirm I'm at the top speed this can do with my 1800X. thanks in advance.

You can try. If I recall, anything over 2666 is considered overclocked by the chipset. I had a 3000mhz kit pushing 3200 on my Zen+ configuration. 

I would just be aware that by the standard of your motherboard, you are now in a range that you'd consider an overclock, and if you're not experienced, I wouldn't push it too much higher.

 

That said, the performance difference that you would see between 2933 and 3600 will be very small. Achieving 2933, 3000 or 3200 with a nice low CAS Latency would yield similar, and likely more stable results. You're already looking at the ceiling for your Zen1 CPU. That said, if you're pairing it with a decent GPU, there is no reason it should bottleneck almost anything on the market (a 3080 or 3090 might push that?) So for gaming FPS, I would just find a stable RAM speed, and if upgrading is to be done, look currently to your GPU. (Or maybe a cheap used Ryzen 3600 or 5600X depending on your board compatibilities.)