Cant OC anything on my Asrock B450m Pro4

[MPSmith73]

Hey Everyone, I'm new here but would appreciate some help. I have an Asrock B450 pro4 that I have been having fun with for almost a year now. I've been teaching myself how to OC the memory with the Ryzen DRAM calculator and my own trial and error.

A few weeks ago something went sideways with the OC Tweaker tab. Changes to settings are saved but aren't reflected in windows when it boots. I've restored the default values in Bios, reset the bios via the MB jumper, pulled the CMOS battery, switched memory locations and number of dims but nothing changes. I've even switch memory with my daughters PC to see if it made a difference. My memory in her PC works fine but her memory in my PC has the same behavior. I can set the memory to 4000mhz cl10 and bios will save it (it doesn't train the memory though so it never does the three startup attempts) but it will still boot and show 2400mhz in CPU-z. Load BIOS again and its still set to 4000mhz. I uninstalled Ryzen Master thinking that it might be a potential conflict but there is no change.

I would upgrade the bios to 3.6 but there is a disclaimer on Asrock's website stating that its not recommended 2000 series CPUs. Rolling back to an older version wont work because there is a disclaimer on the current version that I have stating that you I cant roll back to the previous version.

The build is:
2600x on the Asrock B450m PRO4 with P3.50 bios version
Crucial BLS8G4D32AESBK.M8FE
Corsair CMK16GX4M2B3000C15
(Memory was tried separately not all 4 sticks at the same time)
Sapphire 5600xt
NZXT 400 something (Plenty of airflow)
Intel NVME
Intel ssd
Toshiba HDD
620w Seasonic PSU
I monitor with CPUID's HW Monitor and CPU-Z

I contacted Asrock tech support a few days ago but haven't heard a thing. I'm running out of ideas. Can anyone offer some new suggestions?

Thanks and sorry that this was so long.

Matt

 

[MPSmith73]

Hi Everyone, Thanks for the reply's.

Joxeon, I may have tried Ryzen Master early on but have been able to tweak in bios since then. I've uninstalled RM as part of my troubleshooting. Maybe there is something lingering in the system that is causing this headache.

sandys, I'm not using the different ram together, I tested the Corsair ram from my daughter's PC to see if it did the same thing. It did. Im currently back to the Crucial modules.

DoneADougalOnSofa, I'm also using Ryzen timing checker 1.05 so I'm fairly confident that its reading correctly. Cinibench and memtest (in Ryzen DRAM Calculator) scores also reflect that the memory is performing at the reported speeds (slower speed = lower score). I did however install HWiNFO64. Its nice having all that info in one place.

Things have changed a little since my original post. After resetting the bios and removing the CMOS battery I was able to get XMP to by setting it with one memory module installed and then installed the other. I was also able to load a saved OC profile that I had made before these problems started. Although things seem stable I still cant tweak any OC settings in bios to either the XMP profile or the saved profile.

So basically the issue I had wasn't that the memory wont overclock, its that the OC settings in bios were not present when Windows loaded. So for example, I could set XMP in bios, save the settings and boot into windows and it will still show 2400mhz (should be 3200). Reboot and go into bios again and the XMP setting is applied. If I try to set custom timings in BIOs without xmp the same thing happened. My understanding is that bios should test the settings first to make sure its stable before loading into Windows (the three startup attempts). Its not doing that and that's why I tried tried 4000Mhz CL10. I didn't expect it to work, I expected the three startup attempts and then for bios to revert back to 2400Mhz. It didn't. Windows booted and the timings were at 2400Mhz. Reboot into Bios and the 4000Mhz settings were loaded.

Over clocking the CPU has the same behavior. Settings saved in bios are not present after Windows boots.

Interestingly, I'm able to load a profile in Bios that I had saved earlier before all this started. Its 3600Mhz CL16 that's been stable for the past few days. Additionally interesting is that I cant change timings (or any settings) to that saved profile.

Other settings in bios are fine, Custom fan profiles are saved and working.

Sorry if this is confusing, I'm trying to explain it a well as I understand it.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

 

[MPSmith73]

Hmm, I've been hesitant to upgrade the bios because Asrock doesn't recommend 3.6 for 2nd gen CPUs. If its working for your 2400g then that's a good option though. I'd still like to figure out what changed in my system. It was working fine and I was having fun learning. Now its just frustrating.

on a side note, my Daughters PC has a 2400g and I have to say that that is one awesome little rig for the money. I have it clocked at 4000mhz (at stock it was lagging) and she plays battlefront, Sims and Mindcraft on it without a dedicated graphics card. Great value.

 

[MPSmith73]

Thanks for confirming...