RAM Compatibility - Does it matter?

[Hi P]

I've seen many posts asking for such thing, if X motherboard is compatible with Y ram, but my question is why does it matter?

 

Would not having a compatible RAM means it won't even be detected?

 

Or would it just underperform / not O.C properly?

 

Thanks

[Fasauceome]

Having incompatibility could result in no boot, slow speeds, or any other sort of strange behavior. However, incompatible ram is pretty rare, so there's not always cause for concern with such things.

[STRESSMASTER]

Spoiler

On 9/19/2018 at 11:33 PM, tito9107 said:

So I found this post and it seems to be what I'm experiencing. 

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2982345/amd-8350-throttled-ghz.html

 

I'm just going to call it and work on getting a different motherboard.

 

5 minutes ago, Hi P said:

I've seen many posts asking for such thing, if X motherboard is compatible with Y ram, but my question is why does it matter?

 

Would not having a compatible RAM means it won't even be detected?

 

Or would it just underperform / not O.C properly?

 

Thanks

 

Some RAM latency is too high or too low to boot right. I have a 2700 ryzen CPU and found that you need 3200Mhz RAM to get the top performance of the CPU. anything less and the CPU takes a performance hit as well.

[DailyProcrastinator]

3 minutes ago, Hi P said:

I've seen many posts asking for such thing, if X motherboard is compatible with Y ram, but my question is why does it matter?

 

Would not having a compatible RAM means it won't even be detected?

 

Or would it just underperform / not O.C properly?

 

Thanks

Intel doesn't have much of an issue with RAM compatibility and their motherboards. But in the past Ryzen motherboards would often have performance issues with incompatible RAM, recent BIOS updates have fixed this but trying to get compatible RAM is always the ideal. Especially if you want to optimize the full speed of your RAM. I had issue overlocking my CPU and getting my RAM past 2666MHz because my RAM wasn't compatible. This is no longer an issue but it's something to be aware of.

[Mira Yurizaki]

21 minutes ago, Hi P said:

I've seen many posts asking for such thing, if X motherboard is compatible with Y ram, but my question is why does it matter?

 

Would not having a compatible RAM means it won't even be detected?

 

Or would it just underperform / not O.C properly?

 

Thanks

In theory as long as the speed rating of the RAM matches or exceeds the rating of what the motherboard manufacturer lists it can take, it shouldn't matter. If the RAM is flatout incompatible, the system simply will fail POST and will complain about it (via the buzzer).

 

If anything, I think people think the QVL document that manufacturers list think that's what's compatible with the motherboard or not. The QVL document is just the RAM kits the manufacturer tested to make sure it actually works and it doesn't imply kits not tested are not compatible. So all it really means is if you want the maximum chance of your system being happy with the RAM, use the kits on the QVL document.

[luigi90210]

26 minutes ago, STRESSMASTER said:

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Some RAM latency is too high or too low to boot right. I have a 2700 ryzen CPU and found that you need 3200Mhz RAM to get the top performance of the CPU. anything less and the CPU takes a performance hit as well.

not really, my ryzen 5 1600 performs basically the same at 4ghz with my ram running at 2400mhz or 2933mhz(CB single is 162 with 2400mhz vs 163 2933mhz, and multicore is within margin of error 1303 vs 1307), while i am not saying do not buy 3200mhz ram, i will say it doesn't make your processor that much faster, imo its better to buy what you can afford now and not worry too much about performance

[STRESSMASTER]

17 minutes ago, luigi90210 said:

not really, my ryzen 5 1600 performs basically the same at 4ghz with my ram running at 2400mhz or 2933mhz(CB single is 162 with 2400mhz vs 163 2933mhz, and multicore is within margin of error 1303 vs 1307), while i am not saying do not buy 3200mhz ram, i will say it doesn't make your processor that much faster, imo its better to buy what you can afford now and not worry too much about performance

true this but the difference is there. I was more referring to 4.2Ghz +

[luigi90210]

Just now, STRESSMASTER said:

true this but the difference is there. I was more referring to 4.2Ghz +

its all diminishing returns, i can pay $120 for a 16gb kit of ddr4 2400mhz vs the $160 you will pay for a DDR4 3200mhz kit and that $40 can be used towards a better psu or a bigger ssd, ect.

also zen 1 was touted for having the best performance with 3200mhz ram and the fact that in my own testing and others testing on my discord server(with threadripper, zen 1 and zen+) we have all come to the conclusion that if you cant afford to spend money on 3200mhz memory, just buy anything faster than 2133mhz(mainly because 2400mhz and 2133 are the same price)

if my testing doesnt satisfy you than here is a youtuber showing their numbers which again show everything within margin or error and at most you will see maybe 5% in synthetic benchmarks between ddr4 2400 vs ddr4 3200
also i cant help it if my zen processor only runs at 4ghz, kind of a platform limitation with first gen ryzen, i would be running 4.1ghz if it didnt require a vcore of 1.475v, right now i think im happy with my 4ghz at 1.385v vcore 

again i want to reiterate, im not saying buying 3200mhz memory is bad, and im not saying there is no performance gains, im saying that if you cant afford to buy 3200mhz memory, dont worry about it