[SOLVED] Compatibility question, MSI pro-A z370 RAM slots

[anassheep]

Motherboard : MSI pro-A z370
RAM : Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz

I remember when I built my PC 2 years ago, that only 2 RAM slots in this motherboard (slot 1 and 3 as I remember) support this RAM speed (3000 MHz), and the other 2 slots only support lower speed ( I don't remember it )

So I am planning to buy the exact same RAM to have 32 GB RAM in total, but I am afraid that not all of them will run at same speed and whether it is possible to run them at different speeds.

Could anybody confirm this ? I read https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z370-A-PRO/Specification , but I can't see any information about my question.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Officially, your CPU only supports up to 2400 or 2666 MHz (depending on which particular CPU you have) RAM, regardless of the number of sticks. Anything higher is an overclock.

Combining two separate memory kits, even if they're the exact same model, is not guaranteed to work together. Also, in general, running 4 sticks at a particular speed is harder than 2 sticks.

So no, there's no official limit anywhere saying that you can't run 3000 MHz with 4 sticks, and there's a good chance it'll work. But you may have issues that require manual tweaking, or even lowering the memory speed, to get everything working stable.

No, you cannot run your memory at two different speeds.

 

[anassheep]

Officially, your CPU only supports up to 2400 or 2666 MHz (depending on which particular CPU you have) RAM, regardless of the number of sticks. Anything higher is an overclock.

Combining two separate memory kits, even if they're the exact same model, is not guaranteed to work together. Also, in general, running 4 sticks at a particular speed is harder than 2 sticks.

So no, there's no official limit anywhere saying that you can't run 3000 MHz with 4 sticks, and there's a good chance it'll work. But you may have issues that require manual tweaking, or even lowering the memory speed, to get everything working stable.

No, you cannot run your memory at two different speeds.

my cpu is i7 8700k, its not the problem

The first time i put the RAM in slot 1 and 2, the speed was automatically reduced to 2400 because only slots 1 and 3 can be overclocked (this is what i read online about this motherboard at the time), so people told me to put them in slot 1 and 3 so i could run them at 3000MHz

anyway thanks.

 

[TJ Hooker]

The first time i put the RAM in slot 1 and 2, the speed was automatically reduced to 2400 because only slots 1 and 3 can be overclocked (this is what i read online about this motherboard at the time), so people told me to put them in slot 1 and 3 so i could run them at 3000MHz

No idea where that bit about only being able to OC 1 and 3 came from, but it's wrong.

With only two sticks of RAM you should be ideally using DIMMA2 and DIMMB2 (2nd and 4th, counting up as you move further from the CPU socket).

What do you use your PC for? What made you decide to upgrade to 32GB of RAM?

 

[anassheep]

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/863112-msi-z370-a-pro-atx-lga1151-motherboard-help/
this is what iam talking about, i put in A1 A2 slots the first time, then i read that it should be in A1 B1, does that mean adding ram in A2 B2 slots will make everything run at same speed ? I have no idea about this hardware stuff.

i need 32 GB because I do a lot of things at the same time, 20+ chrome tabs, VSCode and other prog stuff, gaming all at once which makes my memory usage 95%-100%

 

[TJ Hooker]

What exactly are you referring to in that thread?

If you're going to have 4 sticks of memory then you don't have a choice in which slots to populate, you're just going to fill them all. I guess if I were to do it I'd put your current kit in a2/b2 and the new kit in a1/b1 (or vice versa), but I'm not sure if that makes a difference.

As I said above, combining separate RAM kits is not guaranteed to work together, at least at full speed. But regardless what frequency they run at, all sticks will be the same frequency (it's not possible for them to be running at different frequencies).