Memory, voltage and trc

[Wuffer]

Hello all,

I'm hoping for a bit of ram advice. I'm using a Gigabyte X470 Gaming 7 with 2700X (not overclocked) and Crucial Ballistix Elite 3200. The ram defaulted to 2100mhz, so I enabled XMP in the bios which resulted in boot failure; after a dozen or more restarts I got into the bios and turned off XMP. Since then I've been gradually upping the speed until I got to 2933mhz 16 18 18 38 trc 52 at 1.2v, which was absolutely rock solid. Today I tweaked the speed to 3000mhz and major boot failure, again taking numerous reboots to eventually get into the bios and wind the speed back a notch. I know the voltage should be 1.35v at 3200mhz, but should I go straight from 1.2 to 1.35 at 3000mhz, or try something in between, say 1.25? Also I can find no recommended trc setting for this ram at particular speeds, but 52 at 3000mhz seems quite low from other specs I've seen, so is it worth changing it?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Woomack]

I would set 1.35V and 3200. You may also check tighter timings at this voltage as Ballistix Elite 3200+ are on Samsung IC which should run at CL14.
TRC is more for stability than performance. Leave it at auto.
At 3200 you may need to set higher SOC voltage. Add +0.1V to what you see at auto but no more than 1.20V in total. 1.1V should be enough.

 

[freakdiablo]

Just a shot in the dark, but I'd take it a step further than what Woomack said and try applying all XMP settings manually. GB may have fixed it and it may not apply to the AMD side, but when I first got the GB board in my sig I had similar issues with XMP applied- constant boot failures, maybe 1 in 5 boots where it'll post, and even then I'd get memtest86+ errors until I disabled XMP. Turns out there was a mild bug between the board and certain sets of Corsair RAM, where even though it was on the QVL the two wouldn't play nice. After some poking I realized one of the buried voltage settings wasn't taking to the XMP voltage and had to be applied manually.

But like I said, chances are it's been fixed (haven't done too much fiddling since flashing a newer BIOS) and have only seen comments/reviews about the problem with the Z170X-UD5s, but worth a look.

 

[Wuffer]

Thanks for the replies. I've played around a bit more with manual settings and got to 2933mhz 16-16-16-16-34-52, which is pretty respectable, but no matter what I do with timings or voltage I can't get better than 2933mhz. I really don't need it any faster, but it's just a bit irritating that I can't get the rated 3200mhz.

 

[Alaric]

Isn't Ryzen different from Intel in that it likes slightly different speeds? (2933 vs. 3000, etc..) I thought I saw that with the first gen, but I'm not sure about second gen. Also, 2933 MHz is the max supported speed for second gen Ryzen, https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-2700x

That doesn't mean it absolutely won't run faster, but that's all AMD officially supports with it.

 

[Woomack]

All depends on the chipset/generation. New Intels run all the same frequencies, older had no options like 2933 or 3066.
In this case I think it's a BIOS or settings issue rather than memory. I had no problems with Crucial memory on Ryzen and actually it was working better than G.Skill on my first Ryzen boards (I had 3466 kit but should be on the same IC as 3200). Also all newer kits based on Micron IC run great on Ryzen. I had no experience with new Gigabyte Ryzen boards except one B350 board on which 3200+ was working without issues but there was almost no options to set, only main timings and 2 voltages.