Best chance to get 3200 Mhz ram or more with 4X8 GB kit

[SexyTerrorisT]

Hello to fellow rog enthusiasts.

For TL;DR (Too long ; Don't read) jump to last paragraph. Thanks in advance

Seeing how ram bandwidth really drives performance on some games and other latency sensitive application i was thinking what would be the optimal decision to make regarding ram purchase.

I have currently ordered a Gskill F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR ram which as its name suggest is a 4X8 GB RGB kit from gskill rated for 3200 Mhz for intel platform.
I know AMD does not support officially support that kind of speed for 4 dimm single ranked modules but a lot seem to have managed to reach those speed with various BIOS by overclocking.

Demand for kits at 3200 Mhz has been very high and its very hard to find them is stock. I am considering dropping the ram i currently have ordered and getting higher rated kits at 3600 Mhz or even 3866 Mhz (for intel platforms) which are in stock

Instead of waiting for the F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR
https://www.gskill.com/en/product/f4-3200c14q-32gtzr

to arrive I am specifically eyeing the following (yea i am in love with the looks for this line of RBG) since those even though more expensive are in stock:
- F4-3600C17Q-32GTZR
https://www.gskill.com/en/product/f4-3600c17q-32gtzr
- F4-3600C16Q-32GTZR
https://www.gskill.com/en/product/f4-3600c16q-32gtzr
- F4-3866C18Q-32GTZR
https://www.gskill.com/en/product/f4-3866c18q-32gtzr

From what i gathered all those kits must be Samsung B die chips inside. Best memory manufacturinng process or ram atm. Is that assumption correct? Any chance any of those have the undredly hynix ones?

I know getting above 3200 mhz is pretty much a wet dream now and probably in the near future with a Ryzen 7 1800X and a 370X chipset but my train of thought is that the next iteration of ryzen should also run on the crosshair VI hero and most likely will be made on a better and more mature manufacturing process. This process then should support better speeds.

Some reading of the crosshair VI hero overclocking thread of overclock.net i found some intresting data.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1624603/rog-crosshair-vi-overclocking-thread

Both the ram i ordered F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR and the F4-3866C18Q-32GTZR have managed to get 3200 Mhz stable with 32 GB.
The F4-3866C18Q-32GTZR has managed to do so with slight higher voltage. Then again this might be due to varition of the IC in memory controller

DIMM Part number DRAM IC DRAM Configuration BCLK Frequency DRAM Ratio DRAM Frequency Timings Voltage CPU SOC Voltage BIOS version
F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR Samsung B 4x8GB 100 3200 3200 MHz 18-16-16-38-75-2T 1.35 1.1 Bios:0083
F4-3866C18Q-32GTZR Samsung B 4x8GB 100 3200 3200 MHz 18-16-16-38-2T 1.4 1.15 0902

My understanding is the 3866 Mhz kits since is better ic ram can run at 3200 14-14-14-36-2T but the F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR most likely wont be able to reach 3866 at the more loose timing of 18-19-19-39-2N unless you are really lucky. Ryzen 7 seems to care more about speed than timings.

Should i get the more expensive but faster in stock F4-3866C18Q-32GTZR kit or wait for the out of stock F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR but cheaper kit to increases chances of getting 3200Mhz with 32GB(regarless platform considered)? Maybe the F4-3600C17Q-32GTZR or F4-3600C16Q-32GTZR.

Thanks in advance.

[BaneSilvermoon]

Have to agree on the prime testing stuff. Hell I've been under the impression in recent years that I'm in the minority in even using it anymore. have seen a huge number of people say stressing the system that far is unnecessary because it's not real world load.

Personally, I'd prefer to be sure my system can manage a load well beyond what I'll throw at it when I'm done. My finalized settings, once I'm completely done with any and all tweaking and don't plan to look at the BIOS again unless forced to, always gets a long Prime run at some point when I'm not going to be using the PC. Until then, I won't truly consider it stable.

How long that run is, typically depends on what I'm doing and how badly I want to use my PC. But it tends to range anywhere from twelve hours to three days if I occupy myself with something else or just don't have a need to get on the computer for a while.

It's all subjective and about what your fault tolerance and confidence level is. Clearly for some people that is less than even running something like Prime.

[injurer]

I'm running a 4x8@2666 Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 kit perfectly fine a bit over 3200 and even lowered the original timings. It works both with 1T and 2T BIOS.

It's perfectly stable and I was running AIDA64 stress test for a couple of hours without issues. The only thing you should have in mind I've adjusted the base clock at around 120 MHz.

http://hwbot.org/submission/3508576_injurer_memory_frequency_2x_ddr4_sdram_1630.4_mhz
http://hwbot.org/image/1815446.jpg

The exact model is: CMD32GX4M4A2666C15

I'm also waiting to receive a 2x16 Corsair Dominator Platinum kit @3200 to see if I can push it at even higher speeds and to see how a 2 stick kits works with Ryzen.

[Theagg]

injurer wrote:
I'm running a 4x8@2666 Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 kit perfectly fine a bit over 3200 and even lowered the original timings. It works both with 1T and 2T BIOS.

It's perfectly stable and I was running AIDA64 stress test for a couple of hours without issues. The only thing you should have in mind I've adjusted the base clock at around 120 MHz.

http://hwbot.org/submission/3508576_injurer_memory_frequency_2x_ddr4_sdram_1630.4_mhz
http://hwbot.org/image/1815446.jpg

The exact model is: CMD32GX4M4A2666C15

I'm also waiting to receive a 2x16 Corsair Dominator Platinum kit @3200 to see if I can push it at even higher speeds and to see how a 2 stick kits works with Ryzen.

There's obviously a distinct difference between the Corsair Dominator and Corsair Vengeance then, as my 32gb (4 x 😎 Vengeance LPX 3200C16 will not run any higher than 2933Mhz. no matter what BCLK setting etc, the system won't boot above that.

[BaneSilvermoon]

I've got 4x8 Flare X running at 3200 currently, but I had to loosen the timings. I'm currently working on tightening them back up to see where the limit is.
F4-3200C14D-16GFX

[SexyTerrorisT]

BaneSilvermoon wrote:
I've got 4x8 Flare X running at 3200 currently, but I had to loosen the timings. I'm currently working on tightening them back up to see where the limit is.
F4-3200C14D-16GFX

Sweet are you running them lower than 18-16-16-38? Did you need to tweak voltages to manage?

[BaneSilvermoon]

SexyTerrorisT wrote:
Sweet are you running them lower than 18-16-16-38? Did you need to tweak voltages to manage?

I literally spent the entire day yesterday playing with RAM settings. I work from home and started screwing with it four hours before my shift, had a slow night, and ended up spending 12+ hours sitting nearby my PC adjusting and testing things.The lowest timings I've gotten to post were 17,17,17,37. Which was quickly unstable in windows.

Oddly, I still haven't seen ANY improvement whatsoever from changing voltages. I ended up just assuming that it's because the RAM is running below it's stock settings, so it must not be pushing the RAM itself hard enough to benefit from voltage changes, but who knows. I may still mess with that some more for tightening later. Perhaps I'm missing some other voltage setting that is needed.
The timings I settled in on yesterday were 18,16,16,45 at stock voltage. I left memtest running overnight and after 1300% pass, had about 5 errors.

So I lazily bumped them all up one. CPU-Z currently reads 20, 17, 17, 46.
I let memtest run while I was doing stuff earlier and got a 750% pass with no errors, which is probably good enough to consider this a stable base to work from for now.

[CAP1TAL]

BaneSilvermoon wrote:
I literally spent the entire day yesterday playing with RAM settings. I work from home and started screwing with it four hours before my shift, had a slow night, and ended up spending 12+ hours sitting nearby my PC adjusting and testing things.The lowest timings I've gotten to post were 17,17,17,37. Which was quickly unstable in windows.

Oddly, I still haven't seen ANY improvement whatsoever from changing voltages. I ended up just assuming that it's because the RAM is running below it's stock settings, so it must not be pushing the RAM itself hard enough to benefit from voltage changes, but who knows. I may still mess with that some more for tightening later. Perhaps I'm missing some other voltage setting that is needed.
The timings I settled in on yesterday were 18,16,16,45 at stock voltage. I left memtest running overnight and after 1300% pass, had about 5 errors.

So I lazily bumped them all up one. CPU-Z currently reads 20, 17, 17, 46.
I let memtest run while I was doing stuff earlier and got a 750% pass with no errors, which is probably good enough to consider this a stable base to work from for now.

I got the F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR kit, and got it running with 18,16,16,36, haven't done a stress test yet but seems stable so far, gaming etc. Also tried your 20,17,17,46 that worked too. I had the kit running @ 3000mhz 14,14,14,34 at first.

So which one would be faster, 3000mhz 14,14,14,34 or 3200mhz 18,16,16,36?

[BaneSilvermoon]

CAP1TAL wrote:
So which one would be faster, 3000mhz 14,14,14,34 or 3200mhz 18,16,16,36?

Clock cycle time is better at the lower timing settings.
CL/((Freq/2)x1000) = Xns
14/((3000/2)x1000) = 9.33ns
18/((3200/2)x1000) = 11.25ns

My system seems to respond much better to lower timings at 2933 as well. But personally, due to the Ryzen Infinity Fabric, I'm not even considering lowering the frequency.

I've been doing a lot of memory testing this week to see exactly how tight I can get the timings stable at stock voltage. Appears it's going to be a bit higher than I was running.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Vdy6cG9bkZdLP9u86Wn3S3w0nQ8Er8BzZNhC8fWkN6c/edit?usp=sharing

[GrooveIsNow]

BaneSilvermoon wrote:
I've got 4x8 Flare X running at 3200 currently, but I had to loosen the timings. I'm currently working on tightening them back up to see where the limit is.
F4-3200C14D-16GFX

I have this kits as well paired with R1700 and so far no major issues. I got this kit with the hopes that it being "AMD Ryzen" compatible would cause me less headaches 🙂
I will say I'm fairly new to these kinds of things like overclocking and understanding everything required to get the most out of your system so please bare with me.

Anyway, I first tested this ram just by changing the frequency to 3200Mhz in bios, left everything at stock settings. CPUZ was reading 14-14-14-34. Booted up fine, no issues. Did some render tests on Cinebench, did some rendering and exporting in Adobe Premiere and after effects, played some games (mind you I'm not much of a gamer these days so I'm playing older games like Skyrim, Sniper Elite 2, Assasins Creed liberation...need to catch up) so pretty much normal use.
Then I tried messing around with bios settings, core set to 3.7Ghz at 1.25, left memory at 1.35v (default), did the same things above and still running like a champ.

I did have issues when trying to overclock to 3.8-3.9 it would boot sometimes but not all the time at the current settings, then I raised the ram voltage to 1.4v and it seemed to be more stable at 3.8Ghz. I stressed my system for about 20min with Aida64 and it seemed stable but I can't say that it was 100% just yet.

As I said, I'm still learning but so far, after all the fiddling, reading posts, googling, youtube etc I'm pleased with current settings at 3.7Ghz 1.25v +offset (I'm sure I can get to 3.8Ghz stable) 3200Mhz, real world load temps I've only seen the temps at low 40c however when stressing with Aida it plateaued at about 50-52c after 20min but I do plan on stressing it a bit more as well as the memory but I normally don't do those kinds of test too much....for me as long as I can do my everyday tasks without crashing I'm happy 🙂

Would love to hear some feedback on these readings....if you see anything that looks odd or I can improve on, I'm all ears.
I will say though, temps between Aida64 and HWMonitor are off, sometimes 5-8c difference.

[BaneSilvermoon]

Nice. Have you run GeekBench on it?
I'd be interested in seeing how close to identical a 1700 at 3.7 with 3200 memory is to a stock 1800x with the same memory.
Your timings are better than what I can manage currently. Might even score better than mine.

You running just 2 sticks of RAM?