Question Changed coolers and added RAM

beauknowsdiddly

Distinguished
Feb 24, 2010
369
18
18,815
Hey Everyone,
I recently changed my Cooler from the Noctua NH-D15S to the H170i elite capellix liquid cooler and went from 16GB RAM to 64GB. I'm using a Gigabyte x470 Aorus ultra Gaming ATX mobo with a Ryzen 7 2700X cpu and a GTX 1070 GPU. When I switched everything over I removed the Battery thinking it would reset the clock speed. When I finally got it back up and running the bios said it was reset but the clock speed reads 4.2. I dunno it that's what the default was or not to be honest. I think it was 3.7 but I could be wrong. Anyway I've been playing Dying Light 2 with no issues before the change and now it crashes after playing for about 2 minutes. I know nothing about overclocking but the game ran just fine before any over clocking at all. What could be the issue? Can I send you some shots of my BIOS. What pages do you need?
 
When I finally got it back up and running the bios said it was reset but the clock speed reads 4.2. I dunno it that's what the default was or not to be honest. I think it was 3.7 but I could be wrong.
3.7GHz is what is termed the "base clock speed" for a Ryzen 2700X. The motherboard BIOS can automatically boost one or two CPU cores up to 4.3GHz on lightly threaded loads. It can also reduce the CPU clock speed, possibly as low as 800MHz when the system is idling. This has nothing to do with manually overclocking the CPU, where you make changes in the BIOS to push the CPU harder than AMD's default settingss. To recap, rapidly changing CPU frequencies, jumping around between 800MHz and 4.3GHz, are normal for a 2700X.

I removed the Battery thinking it would reset the clock speed.
Removing the CMOS battery would probably remove any manual CPU overclock you might have set, but since you don't know anything about overclocking, it's probable your CPU was running at stock (default) frequencies, as I described above.

No but XMP was on (profile 1 loaded) in BIOS and I disabled that and now the game works just fine. I don't get it.
Running XMP, especially with four sticks of RAM instead of two is a lottery, as many people discover. Four DIMMS place additional loading on the CPUs IMC (integrated Memory Controller) channels, making fast XMP overclocks less stable.

If you don't buy a single kit of four matched DIMMs, but instead install two pairs of unmatched DIMMs, instability can result. It doesn't matter if both pairs of DIMMs have exactly the same part number. They're unlikely to come from the same batch and may contain different memory chips or timings.

If you now have four DIMMs installed, they'll be much more stable running at "stock" JEDEC speeds (probably 2133 or 2400MT/s) with XMP disabled.

The maximum speed guaranteed by AMD for the 2700X is DDR4-2933 and even that might be difficult to achieve with four DIMMs. If you were trying to run four DIMMs at 3000MT/s or faster, it's not surprising the system fails.

You can often get round these hurdles and achieve significantly faster XMP speeds (above 3000MT/s) with some judicious manual tweaking. You have to learn which Primary (Secondary and Tertiary) timings need adjusting in the BIOS, when the automatic XMP settings fail.

I managed to get my 2600X to run at DDR4-3000 on two DIMMs by manually relaxing the CL(CAS) setting by 2 clock cycles. I seem to remember I changed it from CL18 to CL20. You could try CL17 instead of CL15 on your RAM. Load XMP 3000, then tweak the CL setting on each DIMM using manual control.