Memory requires SPD WRITE DISABLE to be FALSE. What does this mean?

[HungryHamster]

I was reading some reviews for Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR5 6600mHz CL32 and the top review listed the main con as: "On Asus motherboards, requires SPD WRITE DISABLE to be FALSE"

 

What does that mean? Is that a big problem? Can someone please explain.

[Eigenvektor]

It's telling you to disable write protection for the RAM's Serial Presence Detect. I assume that technically this could mess up the RAM if the wrong stuff gets written into it?

Quote

By default on certain platforms (such as ASUS), the BIOS disables SPD Writes which prevents access to the SPD raw data on the DDR5 module.

 

https://help.corsair.com/hc/en-us/articles/5718039999117-How-to-Enable-SPD-Write-on-your-ASUS-Z690-motherboard

[HungryHamster]

11 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

It's telling you to disable write protection for the RAM's Serial Presence Detect. I assume that technically this could mess up the RAM if the wrong stuff gets written into it?

 

https://help.corsair.com/hc/en-us/articles/5718039999117-How-to-Enable-SPD-Write-on-your-ASUS-Z690-motherboard

That's good to know, but I'm still not sure if this is something that is likely to happen. Like how dangerous is it to disable write protection? Is that only something that would get messed up by a virus or something?

[Eigenvektor]

1 hour ago, HungryHamster said:

That's good to know, but I'm still not sure if this is something that is likely to happen. Like how dangerous is it to disable write protection? Is that only something that would get messed up by a virus or something?

I don't know. I can only guess that it is intended to protect against accidental breakage by user error, as well as bugs (e.g. in the RGB software writing to it) and possibly viruses. It contains information about the memory modules, so I would think writing to it could potentially mess it up.

 

Not sure RGB is worth that risk. From what I've found you only need to disable write protection when you want to use iCue to control the RGB effects.

[HungryHamster]

Damn, that doesn't sound good. I really want to be able to control the RGB on the memory, but I don't want any issues. It sounds like potentially the RGB software could ruin the memory.

[HungryHamster]

I just found out as of iCUE 4.29 you no longer need to enable SPD write for DDR5 on Asus boards so I won't have anything to worry about.