Help for RAM speed adjustment

[TheDutchman1276]

Hello, I have a PC from a couple of years ago and wanted to add some RAM sticks to it. The build consists of an MSI Tomahawk Max b450 motherboard, a Ryzen 5 3600, and 4 sticks of G-Skill Ripjaws V RAM clocked at 3600 MHz (currently only using 2 sticks). My main question was that when I added the third and fourth stick of RAM and put the clock speed to 3600, windows would function but once I opened a game, it would just say failure to open or something like that. Over time, even Windows stopped functioning correctly. After researching the topic, I concluded that the computer could not handle 4 sticks at 3600, and I toned it down to 2166, where it would function properly. Now I removed the other 2 sticks of RAM and back to 3600. My main question is, what is the source of my problem? After some more research, I read somewhere the processor cannot handle 4 sticks of RAM at 3600, so which one is it, the motherboard or the processor? If it's the motherboard, it would be great if you could tell me which motherboard supports that RAM speed with those sticks and if it's the processor, if it's worth it to upgrade to a 5600x? Thank you for your time.

[Shimejii]

5 minutes ago, TheDutchman1276 said:

Hello, I have a PC from a couple of years ago and wanted to add some RAM sticks to it. The build consists of an MSI Tomahawk Max b450 motherboard, a Ryzen 5 3600, and 4 sticks of G-Skill Ripjaws V RAM clocked at 3600 MHz (currently only using 2 sticks). My main question was that when I added the third and fourth stick of RAM and put the clock speed to 3600, windows would function but once I opened a game, it would just say failure to open or something like that. Over time, even Windows stopped functioning correctly. After researching the topic, I concluded that the computer could not handle 4 sticks at 3600, and I toned it down to 2166, where it would function properly. Now I removed the other 2 sticks of RAM and back to 3600. My main question is, what is the source of my problem? After some more research, I read somewhere the processor cannot handle 4 sticks of RAM at 3600, so which one is it, the motherboard or the processor? If it's the motherboard, it would be great if you could tell me which motherboard supports that RAM speed with those sticks and if it's the processor, if it's worth it to upgrade to a 5600x? Thank you for your time.

its the CPU's memory controller mostly, but it can be motherboard topology as well. Most consumer CPUs cannot handle 4 dimms of high speed ram, even the brand new platforms still struggle when utilizing faster ram when all slots are filled. 

 

Most of the time its CPU IMC (internal memory controller) but occasionally mobo

[RONOTHAN##]

1 hour ago, TheDutchman1276 said:

My main question is, what is the source of my problem?

The fact you're running mixed memory (same model number doesn't mean the same sticks with RAM). If you can get a photo of each stick's label, you should be able to tell if they are actually the same or not, though given that they were bought so far apart they're almost certainly different. 

 

1 hour ago, TheDutchman1276 said:

I read somewhere the processor cannot handle 4 sticks of RAM at 3600, so which one is it, the motherboard or the processor?

the Ryzen 3000/5000 memory controller is perfectly fine running 4 DIMMs, on a good board you can get DDR4 4000 running just fine with 4 DIMMs. It's worse than the 2 DIMM support, sure, but not to the point where 3600 shouldn't work. 

 

As for if it's the motherboard, the B450 Tomahawk is more likely to be the cause than the 3600, that board doesn't particularly like 3600 with 4 DIMMs, though it should still be able to do it with a little bit of tuning. Raising the SOC voltage to 1.15V and tuning the ProcODT setting should be enough with most setups to get it stable (use a test like Y-Cruncher 2.5B for coarse testing, then something stronger like Y-Cruncher VST or Linpack to confirm it's stable). Try a different BIOS revision or two wouldn't hurt though, there are some that don't work well with 4 DIMMs while others that are better with it. 

 

Mixed memory though will usually cause issues at most speeds above JEDEC, with 3600 being well into the territory where it won't work reliably. If you want it to be slightly more reliable, put them the first kit in slots 1 and 2 with the other sticks in slots 3 and 4, since that is theoretically more likely to work (admittedly in my experience this has only helped on Intel systems, not AMD, but it could be worth a shot). 

 

1 hour ago, TheDutchman1276 said:

if it's the processor, if it's worth it to upgrade to a 5600x?

The 5600X and 3600 have the exact same memory controller. Whether it's worth it to upgrade or not is a bit more up for debate, the 5600X is quite a bit faster than the 3600 and doesn't benefit from faster memory as much as the 3600 does, though if you think this will be to get the memory config to work better that's not likely to happen. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

As for if it's the motherboard, the B450 Tomahawk is more likely to be the cause than the 3600, that board doesn't particularly like 3600 with 4 DIMMs, though it should still be able to do it with a little bit of tuning

I think there has been a thread or 2 in the past with dudes running msi b350/450 boards and not being able to run 4 stick even at 3600

 

a t topology board like basically all of asrocks 300 and 400 boards except maybe the taichi or whatever boards that had daisy chain would be better for 4 stick but asrock crippled vdimm on their boards so youll have to hook up a trimpot to the ic that controls ram volt (iirc its the feedback pin) to run >1.4v, but since you arent aiming for >4000 on 4 stick just tuning the msi board will do

 

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Try a different BIOS revision or two wouldn't hurt though, there are some that don't work well with 4 DIMMs while others that are better with it. 

Though there are a bunch of bios revisions and newer =/= better as i found out with my x58a ud3r where fa and fb would do 1:1 uncore : memclk just fine and i can hit >3000 on a nehalem chip, ff would just freeze at d8 postcode without even going through memory training (cycles the same few codes for 3-4 times) when i tried the same settings

 

Since this is amd there are agesa updates my best guess would be to go to the newest bios per agesa update to see if oc capabilities change or not

 

Though for just 3600 ddr4 i wouldnt bother going this far especially since bios chips on those new boards are like 16mb+ so flashing the bios takes absolutely forever compared to my x58 board with a 1mb chip which finishes flashing within half a minute not to mention only having like 10 bios revisions to dig through rather than god knows how many on that b450, if i had to test that many bios revisions id just outright mod the board to be able to hotswap bios chips with a few spares flashing in the background, already takes like 5 minutes just to flash an 8mb chip

 

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Mixed memory though will usually cause issues at most speeds above JEDEC, with 3600 being well into the territory where it won't work reliably. If you want it to be slightly more reliable, put them the first kit in slots 1 and 2 with the other sticks in slots 3 and 4, since that is theoretically more likely to work (admittedly in my experience this has only helped on Intel systems, not AMD, but it could be worth a shot). 

Depends on how different the characteristics of the ics are

 

if theyre somewhat similar theyll clock just fine atleast thats as far as i can tell mixing samsung gdie and psc and booting 3000 ddr3 with it, possibly being able to do a cursed screenshot in windows if it werent for my best psc stick being literal trash in comparison to the gdie stick

 

If theyre quite different jedec should be fine but forget any decent oc on em or xmp, sometimes theyll even be unstable at jedec, and other times just outright no post

 

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The 5600X and 3600 have the exact same memory controller. Whether it's worth it to upgrade or not is a bit more up for debate, the 5600X is quite a bit faster than the 3600 and doesn't benefit from faster memory as much as the 3600 does, though if you think this will be to get the memory config to work better that's not likely to happen. 

I guess it makes sense that they hit basically the same fclk then, wasnt aware of that tbh

 

If you want a top tier imc you can look at cezzane apus like the 5500 5600g or 5700g, should be able to do 5000 ddr4 1:1 at around 1.35v vsoc and dual rank 4600+ but theres basically no data on that aside from a screenshot from reddit cause noone clocks dual rank =(  though perf will be abit worse than a non apu ryzen cause halved cache and they wont clock as high cpu wise (diff of around 200mhz so 4.6ghz vs 4.8ghz at a fixed vcore like 1.35v), id personally still pick cezzane anyways just because its no fun being stuck to slow <4000 for 1:1 fclk and because high speed dual rank =)

 

5600(x) new are not worth it cause theyre overpriced compared to the 12600k(f) which annihilates it but theyre around 80-100$ used, imo not that big of an upgrade over a 3600 so id reccomend going straight to a 5800x3d which are 200-250$ used or a 5700x/5800x for 120-150$ used

[TheDutchman1276]

16 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The fact you're running mixed memory (same model number doesn't mean the same sticks with RAM). If you can get a photo of each stick's label, you should be able to tell if they are actually the same or not, though given that they were bought so far apart they're almost certainly different. 

 

I am sure that the sticks of ram that I am using are the same, they are both sets of G-SKILL Ripjaws V ram 2 8 gb sticks rated at DDR4-3600

[RONOTHAN##]

36 minutes ago, TheDutchman1276 said:

I am sure that the sticks of ram that I am using are the same, they are both sets of G-SKILL Ripjaws V ram 2 8 gb sticks rated at DDR4-3600

Again, that doesn't mean they're the same. Because of how RAM manufacturers operate, they will change the memory IC depending on whatever they have on the floor that day, and since different ICs have different training properties, that can cause them to be incompatible. 

 

G.Skill, at least on their newer kits, will list an IC code next to the serial number for determining what is on their sticks. If that number (specifically the last 4 digits, should be something like "821C" or "810B") is different across all the kits, they're different ICs and that would explain the incompatibility.