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I screwed up when I bought my memory. How to make the best of a bad situation?

Stalkholm
Level 7
TL;DR: I failed to do my due diligence and bought ram that is way too fast for my system to take advantage of, two pairs of F4-3600C15D-16GTZ, AKA 32gb of 3600CL15 Samsung B-Die on four DIMMs. If I overclock my RAM to anything above 3200CL14 Prime95 will start throwing out errors, which I count as the system being unstable. So now I'm left with the question of do I leave in all four sticks and accept a slower memory speed, or take out two sticks and accept that I wasted a gigantic amount of money?

Also, and I know this is going to sound dumb: What questions should I ask the next time I build a PC? It never even occurred to me that Ryzen wouldn't... I'm not blaming Ryzen, it's not AMD's fault that I didn't think to ask the right questions, I just didn't anticipate that it wouldn't be able to handle the rated speeds, so I didn't even think to question anything. Learn from me: Don't be a dumbass, it doesn't pay.
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10 REPLIES 10

AfterShock
Level 10
Stalkholm wrote:
TL;DR: I failed to do my due diligence and bought ram that is way too fast for my system to take advantage of, two pairs of F4-3600C15D-16GTZ, AKA 32gb of 3600CL15 Samsung B-Die on four DIMMs. If I overclock my RAM to anything above 3200CL14 Prime95 will start throwing out errors, which I count as the system being unstable. So now I'm left with the question of do I leave in all four sticks and accept a slower memory speed, or take out two sticks and accept that I wasted a gigantic amount of money?

Also, and I know this is going to sound dumb: What questions should I ask the next time I build a PC? It never even occurred to me that Ryzen wouldn't... I'm not blaming Ryzen, it's not AMD's fault that I didn't think to ask the right questions, I just didn't anticipate that it wouldn't be able to handle the rated speeds, so I didn't even think to question anything. Learn from me: Don't be a dumbass, it doesn't pay.


just run em at 3200 cl14 and see if setting the cmdrate to 1T is stable. anything faster than 3200 has very minimal performance gains which only show up in synthetic benchmarks.

JustinThyme
Level 13
Id take 3200 C14 over 4400 CC19 any day of the week. If you can get that consider yourself fortunate.
Your problem is not the memory or the system but that fact that you bought mixed kits, Huge no no. Doesn't matter if they are the same part number or not, there are probably a thousand or more posts in this forum alone on the same issue. If you an remember which belongs to what kit use just those and Ill bet you get better results. If you need 4 sticks, buy a 4 stick kit.



“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, I'm not sure about the former” ~ Albert Einstein

x-rated
Level 8
its always better to buy 4 modules kit, but its not a disaster while using pair of 2 modules kits, mostly they will work fine
4 sticks just need more sa & io voltage than 2, especially on higher frequency, so rise your voltages and give it another try 🙂

now i see this is amd forum, i dont know exactly how it works there 🙂

JustinThyme
Level 13
Works the same everywhere. Unmatched kits are a crap shoot at best. Often they wont even post.



“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, I'm not sure about the former” ~ Albert Einstein

I sort of had the same issue recently too. I started out with 2 sticks of ram totally 16 gb of 3600mhz trident z rgb, but ended up needing more ram. I bought 16 more gbs of the same kit, but 4 sticks was too much for the controller to hand at the same speed. ended up upping the voltage and lower the speed to 3333mhz and getting better timings.

I'm satisfied with this result and will end up running at the lower speed. I know that it really wont impact performance all that much.. a few percentage points and won't actually be noticeable in real world use.

First, and most importantly: Thank you all for your feedback!

Secondly: Mixed kits are even a thing!? Mixed Samsung B-die from the same distributor with the same product number and timings is even a thing!? Goddammit. So even when I got the "right" memory I did it in the wrong way. /sigh Do you know what the most frustrating thing about attention deficit disorder is? It's not the big ****ups, it's the little ones, like setting an alarm for 8pm instead of 8am, or taking 68 North instead of 68 South, or buying two "matched" RAM kits only to find out there aren't matched at all.

(The second most frustrating thing is that I often share too much information. Sorry.)

Just for my own edification: If I want to try 3333 again, want to try to make it stable anyway, what would I want to throw more voltage at and what's the red line on those voltages? I don't want to do more harm to my poor computer than I already have.

Stalkholm wrote:
First, and most importantly: Thank you all for your feedback!

Secondly: Mixed kits are even a thing!? Mixed Samsung B-die from the same distributor with the same product number and timings is even a thing!? Goddammit. So even when I got the "right" memory I did it in the wrong way. /sigh Do you know what the most frustrating thing about attention deficit disorder is? It's not the big ****ups, it's the little ones, like setting an alarm for 8pm instead of 8am, or taking 68 North instead of 68 South, or buying two "matched" RAM kits only to find out there aren't matched at all.

(The second most frustrating thing is that I often share too much information. Sorry.)

Just for my own edification: If I want to try 3333 again, want to try to make it stable anyway, what would I want to throw more voltage at and what's the red line on those voltages? I don't want to do more harm to my poor computer than I already have.


You aren't always going to get better performance by upping the speeds. For example:

I have 2 memory kits for two different builds. 3200 and 3600 rated kits. Both 16g kits. I can run the 3600 @ 3600CL17 w/ 1.44 volts stable and get around 1880 in Cinebench with level 3 OC and everything else but CPU voltrage set to default (CPU set to offset + 0.05) Running that same set @ 3200CL13 I get 1903. I'm guessing the 3200 just aren't as good silicone because it won't run stable at its normal timings, I have to down-clock those to 3000CL14.

If I run both at the same time, I have to run both at the lower stock speed of the 3200 (2100?? can't remember off top of my head) to be stable. Getting kinda tired of dealing with all this to be honest, I just want to record my damn music without random crashes and so far none of my DAW's seem to work well with AMD. Anyway, you should, if stable @ 3200 most likely just stay there unless you are trying to win an OC contest. Your RAM will be fine if its bside @ 1.45 all day. Play with timings after that. Once you are stable, back off timings until you aren't.

The difference in gaming between 3200 and 3600 with everything else the same wouldn't even be more then a framed or two if that.

DRAM Calculator for Ryzen
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ryzen-dram-calculator/

Maybe Try your luck with that... with the safe one.

JustinThyme
Level 13
I wouldn’t sweat it at 1.4 volts or even 1.5 if you have good airflow or active cooling.*
The faster the memory gets the more succeptive to idiosyncratic behavior it has become. Back when 1600 MHz was the king of the hill it didn’t matter much so long as you bought sticks with the same timings. *The process is different now. After the sticks are made they get binned by their characteristics and speed capabilities. Then they get binned further to exact frequency and timings. Then they get matched up and tested together and sold as kits. You think you have it bad, look at the offerings for 8x8GB kits compatible with X299! *

To make matters worse it seems it’s more often than not memory won’t run at XMP even with a good matched kit and have to be manually tweaked. Sometimes if you simply change your CPU clock a little they will no longer work or they will start working at XMP. Like I said the faster things get the more finicky they become. Just remember the Hz is only half of the equation. 3200 at CL 14*is actually slightly *faster than 3333 *CL15.*

Equation for time to charge
CL/HZx1000= time to charge in milliseconds

14/3200x1000=4.375 milliseconds
15/3333x1000=4.500 milliseconds

Like I said I’d be all over 3200 a C14!!*



“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, I'm not sure about the former” ~ Albert Einstein