Can Ryzen 5 3600 handle 4000 MHz RAM?

[TheDutchman1276]

Hello, I have a PC build from a couple of years ago and I recently found a good RAM deal in Microcenter and wanted to know if my computer would be able to handle it. I have an MSI b450 Tomahawk Max motherboard that has a Ryzen 5 3600 in it. I have been running 2 8 GB sticks at 3600 MHz, but recently some of the projects for school have used up most of that RAM and I have been feeling a bit laggy because of it. The question that I wanted to ask was if my processor and motherboard would be able to handle 4000 MHz ram of 2 16 gb sticks or if should i keep the speed of 3600 just to expand the space. (The price between the 3600 & 4000 are very close due to the discount).

[CommanderAlex]

99.9% likely no it won't. Possibly will work with 1:2 gear and not 1:1. Pretty pointless at that point then at 1:2.  

[Crunchy Dragon]

Only if the RAM you're buying from Micro Center is DDR4, and not DDR5.

 

Even then, it might be spotty, as you would have to overclock DDR4 in order to reach 4000. DDR4 doesn't typically like clocking that high, and you can induce all kinds of errors and problems with unstable memory overclocks.

[RONOTHAN##]

Yes but actually no. 

 

On most motherboards, I'd expect the 3600 to be able to get to at least DDR4 4400 with single rank memory. The problem is that at those high a speeds, you'll be put in desynced FCLK mode and get significantly worse performance than DDR4 3600. IF you manually set it to synced mode, odds are you'll top out at 3733MT/s, maybe 3800 if you're lucky, but 4000 is out of the question. 

 

Just get the 3600 kit. 

[alyen]

I had to run my 3600 kit at 3466 with the timings for 3600. After that I never bought another 3600 set for AM4.

[Agall]

8 minutes ago, TheDutchman1276 said:

The question that I wanted to ask was if my processor and motherboard would be able to handle 4000 MHz ram of 2 16 gb sticks or if should i keep the speed of 3600 just to expand the space. (The price between the 3600 & 4000 are very close due to the discount).

Probably not without a lot of advanced tuning, if at all. You could always take a better kit and run a custom profile, which a 4000 kit might have more than one XMP profile. Either way, 3600MHz is really the top end for AM4 since Ryzen 5000 and earlier want a sychronized FCLK:MCLK:UCLK, being the fabric, memory, and unified memory bus.

 

In this cases, 1800MHz on the FCLK to run 3600MHz is an overclock, but its known to be quite stable with a proper 3600MHz RAM kit. Past that, you're disproportionately increasing the risk of instability for not much gain, if any at all.