RAM woes on AX370 Gaming 5

[v1ks_]

Hello you guys,

Been away from the scene for awhile and feeling a little lost.
I can't seem to be able to get my memory running anything other than 2133Mhz on my Ryzen build.

So here's what I have, an Aorus AX370 Gaming 5 mobo with the latest BIOS from Gigabyte (F21 as of now), 2x8Gb of Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000Mhz.
The sticks are present on Gigabyte's Memory QVL list.

I am able to turn on XMP in BIOS and boot to Windows. I am able to plug in the multiplier and timings manually and boot into Windows. I even tried to set the RAM to run at 3200Mhz.
It POSTs, it boots into Windows, but everything(HWINFO, AIDA64, CPU-Z) reports that the RAM speed is 2133Mhz. When I reboot and go back into the BIOS, everything is exactly like I left it. No reports of a failed overclock, the speed and timings are there, the XMP profile, if used, is still active.

I'm a bit puzzled. What's going on here? Is this normal for Ryzen(first Ryzen build for me) and I should just disregard what software reports?
Or is the "overclock" actually failing, but instead of not POSTing, it somehow falls back and uses default speeds instead?

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[bigtallanddopey]

I can’t say if it is overclocked and not reporting but I have the same board, same rammand same processor and I cannot get the system stable on anything by 2666.

There is a problem with ryzen and memory some people get away with it other don’t.

 

[DaveB]

I had a 2 x 8GB set of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 a while back and found them to be problematic on Ryzen rigs, but fine with Intel. So I sold them and bought G.Skill DDR4-3200 CL14 Samsung B-Die RAM and used it for my Ryzen experiments. They ran at 3200 with no problems on several X370 and B350 motherboards I was playing around with.

 

[v1ks_]

Thanks, guess I'll try and set it to run @2666Mhz and see what software reports then.
Will try that in a couple of hours. Currently trying to squeeze max I can from that GTX970 of mine.

 

[Woomack]

Corsair RAM is causing issues on Gigabyte boards and it's nothing new. I would still try to set it manually if you have more timings in BIOS. I guess that memory or motherboard is forcing some settings that are not fully compatible and after restart, motherboard back to default settings so 2133.

Try to boot at the highest frequency which is stable. Next enter BIOS and rewrite timings ( change auto to manual and use the same values ) as you have at that highest possible frequency. Then manually change memory frequency to something higher.
Remember that at 2933+ your memory will probably need higher voltage like 1.35-1.40V and maybe also other voltages ( VTT, SOC, not sure what is on your board and how it acts ).

Since I have no Gigabyte board and my only Ryzen Gigabyte board had really limited options then I can't help you much more.

Btw. if anyone is looking for memory that runs on Ryzen without issues at 3200+ then besides all popular Samsung based kits, Patriot Viper LED is pretty good. My last kit runs on MSI and ASRock at XMP/3200 and manual 3466 without issues. On ASRock boots and is pretty stable at 3600 but I had no time to stabilize it. Just letting you know as it's one of the latest memory series.

 

[v1ks_]

Ok, no luck for now. I went as far as using Ryzen DRAM Calculator that I had found elsewhere and manually typing in all 30+ values in BIOS (tried for 3000Mhz), but no luck. Still powercycles and boots to 2133Mhz.
Tried booting to 2666Mhz but that also yielded no results.
I guess 2400Mhz is next then...

Forgot to mention that I did try playing around with DRAM and SOC voltages, which also didn't really help (tried max 1.38V for RAM and 1.1V for SOC).

 

[v1ks_]

Op. Success... in a way.
So, after a few more reboots, cmos clearing, bricking one main bios in a really strange way, flashing to F22b from corrupt F21, I managed to boot to 2933Mhz. XMP is disabled, voltage is set to 1.35V, SOC is left to Auto. The rest of the setting are here:


Giving me this as a result:


Now... is that latency right there... normal?

 

[Woomack]

that latency is typical for Ryzen at this frequency

 

[v1ks_]

Thanks, Woomack.
I'll leave MemTest64 to run overnight to see if those 2933 are actually usable!

 

[v1ks_]

Well, the timings from the calculator ended up not working. AIDA64 would detect a failure and stop (testing just memory, nothing else overclocked) and MemTest64 caused restarts. Both tests failed in under 10 minutes.
Ended up going in BIOS and plugging in Corsair specified timings and leaving everything else there on Auto. Ran MemTest64 overnight, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what to do with the results. There are errors, but are they from OC, or from the sticks themselves, I don't know. What effects would they have on system stability, I also don't know. There is the option to run the same test again @2133Mhz to see what happens, but that'll have to wait for another night.



EDIT:
I went ahead and used manually set tRC value instead of Auto and did a quick HCI Memtest run, no errors here.

 

[Woomack]

On Ryzen try 14-14-14, 16-16-16 and 18-18-18 main timings. Can also check 14-16-16, 16-18-18 or 18-20-20 as some users have good results on them too.
Timings on this platform mean less than frequency so even CL18 performs good and if you make it run at 3200+ then will be higher performance than the 2933 CL16. You can compare results in anything what is not synthetic bandwidth benchmark.
What I said is just an idea if you want to play some more.

 

[v1ks_]

On Ryzen try 14-14-14, 16-16-16 and 18-18-18 main timings. Can also check 14-16-16, 16-18-18 or 18-20-20 as some users have good results on them too.
Timings on this platform mean less than frequency so even CL18 performs good and if you make it run at 3200+ then will be higher performance than the 2933 CL16. You can compare results in anything what is not synthetic bandwidth benchmark.
What I said is just an idea if you want to play some more.

Thanks @Woomack, I'll see what I can do about increasing frequency and loosening the timings. Things, however, are not well at the moment. Current OC to 2933 is not fully stable. When I left for work earlier today, I opened another 16 instances of HCI MemTest. When I got home I was greeted with three errors. One instance ran into an error around 200%, one at 500% and third one at 900%. Progress on instances without errors were somewhere in the region of 2500%.

I'm not sure how much truth is behind the Ryzen DRAM Calculator, but that reports the chip quality to be 98%, with overclocking potential up to 3396Mhz. So far all the attempts to push the RAM to 3200Mhz have failed. It seems that whenever I try to push 1.4V it leads to crashes at boot.

If all else fails, I guess I'll sell off the LPX and look for another kit.

 

[v1ks_]

Small update. Attempted to reach 3200 yesterday and almost managed to get it. Main timings are 16-18-18, but those will have to be loosened it seems. I left 16 instances of HCI MemTest overnight and one instance did pop an error around %550. So in the evening I'll try to loosen the timings a bit and see if it's possible to dial down the voltages. With 1.39 I was unable to post, 1.40 gave a BSOD when trying to log in, 1.41 crashed PC while running MemTest64 and finally 1.42 held up overnight, producing a single error in HCI MemTest. Can't remember what voltages I had elsewhere as I'm not at the PC. SOC was 1.15 and the other memory related voltages were 2.5V and 0.71V.

 

[Woomack]

Looks like you are close. I would check additional settings, maybe sub-timings or maybe voltages. Hard to say what is causing that but if it's nearly stable then you can probably make it.