Is this RAM faulty?

chrislip · 27 Mar 2024 at 13:22

I have taken delivery of a 4*16Gb 8-Pack 3600 B-grade kit. When I try to activate XMP profile 1 it will not work, however profile 2 does work ok even though they are the same from what I can see. I have tried to increase the speed of this to the next setting available (1833 Mhz) but it fails and I get an overclock failed message on boot. I previously had 4 * 16Gb Ballistix 3200 that would go up to 1866 MHz so I know my other components can go at this speed. I have attempted changing the RAM voltage and still cannot get this B die to post above 1800 MHz. Due to the XMP issue does it sound like this could be faulty? Where would you recommend I start to troubleshoot this?

Armageus · 27 Mar 2024 at 13:26

Depends what CPU you are using it with, and 4 Sticks will always place greater demands on the memory controller (so you may need to slightly tweak some CPU voltages to ensure stability)

ATIorNvidia · 27 Mar 2024 at 13:42

3600CL14 or 16?

Tetras · 27 Mar 2024 at 13:49

chrislip said:
I previoulsy had 4 * 16Gb Ballistix 3200 that would go up to 1866 MHz so I know my other components can go at this speed.

Were the Ballistix sticks single rank or dual rank?

chrislip · 27 Mar 2024 at 14:15

Armageus said:
Depends what CPU you are using it with, and 4 Sticks will always place greater demands on the memory controller (so you may need to slightly tweak some CPU voltages to ensure stability)

It is a 5950X in an MSI b450 tomahawk max

Which voltages do you recommend adjusting first?

chrislip · 27 Mar 2024 at 14:15

ATIorNvidia said:
3600CL14 or 16?

CL16

chrislip · 27 Mar 2024 at 14:15

Tetras said:
Were the Ballistix sticks single rank or dual rank?

They were dual rank, same as these 8 packs

ATIorNvidia · 27 Mar 2024 at 16:46

Download zentimings and post a screenshot

chrislip · 27 Mar 2024 at 18:10

Stock timings are here - Stock
XMP are here - XMP

I am also having issues where sometimes the onboard RAID will stop working, it is still set to RAID in UEFI but teh drive disappears from Windows. I have to change the mode to AHCI in UEFI then back to RAID and it works again. Unsure if thsi indicates my motherboard is on the way out and this is another manifestaion or not?

VaderDSL · 27 Mar 2024 at 18:35

Sorry it doesn't help your issue specifically, but I have a B450 tomahawk max and 2*8gb 8-Pack 3600 cl16 and mine also do not work with profile 1 but works flawlessly on profile 2, just in case it might be something odd with this specific model of ram?

ATIorNvidia · 28 Mar 2024 at 00:35

chrislip said:
Stock timings are here - Stock
XMP are here - XMP

I am also having issues where sometimes the onboard RAID will stop working, it is still set to RAID in UEFI but teh drive disappears from Windows. I have to change the mode to AHCI in UEFI then back to RAID and it works again. Unsure if thsi indicates my motherboard is on the way out and this is another manifestaion or not?

Enable XMP then before saving, go into the Memory timings and manually enable GearDown mode. If that doesn't change anything I would play around with the voltages, 1.45v-1.5v VDIMM is fine for B die. You can also manually loosen tRCDRD to 17 or 18 and keep the other primary timings the same (16)
High SOC voltage can be quirky sometimes and you might get better stability by lowering it to somewhere between 1.1-1.15v.

MartinPrince · 28 Mar 2024 at 06:00

You might have a hard time returning for being faulty as XMP is technically overclocking and variables like your motherboard and CPU come into play.

That being said I've had this motherboard and I seem to remember the only way I could get it to play nicely with any kind of memory overclocking was to put in ALL the timings in manually.

That way it ran what would have been the default XMP timings (and higher) perfectly but just enabling XMP strangely wouldn't work.