Why does Ryzen not like 4 DIMMs?

[Alan0387]

So having just built my pc before lockdown, a Ryzen 3200g based system with MSI Mortar Max B450, to get her up and running due to budget constraints at the time I installed 8gb (x2 4gb sticks) of Hyper X Fury 3200mhz Ram. Then for father's Day the kids got me another 8gb of the same memory. I chose it, to ensure the correct one! Bought from same vendor, same SKU etc.

After installing and setting everything up, I noticed although my full 16gb is shown, it runs at stock speeds of 2133, it refuses flat out to overclock to its rated xmp profile of 3200.

The original sticks I had running stable over 3400 on one of MSI 'try it' memory profiles.
To eliminate any issues I removed the new sticks, reset ram to previous oc profile, all good. Fit the new sticks in place, they ran stable at over 3400. But once 4 sticks go in together they stick at 2133, regardless of voltages in the controller or DIMMs. All available updates and patches are installed.

Subsequent research shows this is a common issue with Ryzen right back to first gen. So my question is, has anybody found a workaround to this or is it a choice of 16gb over 2 sticks at 3200 or 16gb over 4 sticks at 2133? I may be able to return the sticks from father's Day but since they have been opened and they are not technically faulty, I'm not so sure. As a pc that is mainly used for household work and mild gaming (my PS4 is being worked overtime in warzone currently) which benefits Ryzen more, speed or quantity?

Apologies for long post, just trying to give as much info as possible!

Thanks,
Alan

 

[Alan0387]

Thanks everybody, apologies for my late response, I've had a nightmare week in work
I really appreciate all the advice and tips given above and I have some time set aside from wife/kids this weekend to try out suggestions above!

Quickly answering some questions;

Yes I do use the iGPU for gaming, but never was planned for long term, this build was always planned as a learning/upgrading experience and budget was large factor in initial building, which the Ryzen APU helped with.

I have cpuz installed as part of a pack of programs recommended from various YouTube channels for learning overclocking so I'll check that out too.

I forgot about the compatibility lists, I never thought to check them, d'oh

I might run a few games/benchmarks with the 4 sticks at stock speed and see how it fares for now, I would like to put a Zen 2 in there with a decent GPU. I got sucked into the Ryzen NEEDS fast memory to work theory, but for my spec pc, quantity might make up for that shortfall in pace.

I've tested both sets of memory and each set will run over 3400mhz stable so it's just down to my board/CPU combo it seems