How long to wait for memory training?

[Soid]

I swapped out some memory in my main PC and decided to huck the old stuff in the NAS. The memory is 4x16 GB Corsair Vengence CMK32GX5M2B52000C40. The mobo is an ASUS PRIME B650M-A AX II with a AMD 8600G in it. Mobo supports up to 192 GB of memory. The memory isn't on the supported memory list, but I figured it's probably fine at JEDEC settings.

 

However, It hasn't output any screen yet for about 20 minutes now.  I know memory training can take a while, but how long is too long to wait before I decided this particular memory set isn't going to work?

 

Also, why is DDR5 such a pain in the butt? Maybe I was just ignorant, but it seemed like DDR4 and before just worked.

[Hinjima]

5 minutes ago, Soid said:

I swapped out some memory in my main PC and decided to huck the old stuff in the NAS. The memory is 4x16 GB Corsair Vengence CMK32GX5M2B52000C40. The mobo is an ASUS PRIME B650M-A AX II with a AMD 8600G in it. Mobo supports up to 192 GB of memory. The memory isn't on the supported memory list, but I figured it's probably fine at JEDEC settings.

 

However, It hasn't output any screen yet for about 20 minutes now.  I know memory training can take a while, but how long is too long to wait before I decided this particular memory set isn't going to work?

 

Also, why is DDR5 such a pain in the butt? Maybe I was just ignorant, but it seemed like DDR4 and before just worked.

Getting 4 sticks of RAM to work on AM5 systems can be a pain and sometimes impossible... even at stock speeds.

Try 2 sticks and see if it boots.

 

Memory training about 5 minutes on super early BIOS revision.

20 seconds to 2 minutes on updated / latest BIOS.

[Aleph256]

6 minutes ago, Soid said:

why is DDR5 such a pain in the butt

Because it's fast and strains the CPU's memory controller.

As @Hinjima mentioned, AM5 doesn't like 4 sticks.
And to answer your base question, the 5 minutes mark is where I start wondering if something went wonky.

[podkall]

Few minutes or little more, at least for first memory training, the next trainings shouldn't take minutes, maybe just one max.

 

If subsequent memory trainings take long, BIOS update could fix that. Sometimes though it's just matter of luck and certain RAM+MB combinations can give you long MT times.

 

There's even an option to turn off memory training.

 

Also, booting with 4 DDR5 sticks that aren't running at "base" speed is already kind of an accomplishment.

 

6000Mhz CL30 the sweetspot, is even harder to run on 4, same or worse with speeds above that.

 

Doable of course, doesn't have to be guaranteed fail, 4 DDR5 sticks can work, and sometimes even at XMP/EXPO speeds - or that but after little tweaks.

[Soid]

Getting these 4 sticks to work on my 12700k wasn't super stable either, hence why I upgraded. On that platform I just purchased faster 2x32 GB to stabilize it and get better speeds.

It posted immediately with two sticks.  Still an upgrade for my NAS, so I'm not going to complain. This is early generation RAM and I can't even sell it for cheap, so I'll take what i can get.

[Hinjima]

5 minutes ago, Soid said:

Getting these 4 sticks to work on my 12700k wasn't super stable either, hence why I upgraded. On that platform I just purchased faster 2x32 GB to stabilize it and get better speeds.

It posted immediately with two sticks.  Still an upgrade for my NAS, so I'm not going to complain. This is early generation RAM and I can't even sell it for cheap, so I'll take what i can get.

Your AM5 system posted immediately with 2 sticks?  That doesn't surprise me at all.

AM5 has limitation with its memory controller and getting 4 sticks to work is almost impossible.

This is why we have started to see 2x24GB and 2x48GB DDR5 sticks so we can get higher RAM capacity with 2 sticks  

This is something you can look into in the future if you still want more capacity while keeping stability.

 

Updating the BIOS is also highly recommended as newer BIOS revision have improved RAM compatability and stability.

If you are running an older BIOS, try updating and try with 4 sticks again.

Don't get your hopes up, but I have seen it work.

[freeagent]

About 3-5 mins.. I just watch my phone for a bit. If that LED turns red, then you are either trying to run too fast, or the system would prefer that you would run half of them. I find keeping each set in its own channel to work best. By serial number for example, in the first 2 slots, then the second set by serial number into the second channel.

[Soid]

I got it to boot with all four sticks after restoring the BIOS to defaults. Still wanna do a memtest to make sure it's running properly and do some tuning. It was still on the speeds of the original sticks, which are CL30 / 6000, and these are CL40 / 5400. Much slower ram, but all I had in the NAS before was 2x8 GB, and I don't think speed RAM speed will much of a concern with my use case.