Question RAM is stable on 3000 Mhz but crashes like mad on 3200. Also is RAM "overvoltage" a thing?

leetz0rR_

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So long story short i just built my pc 2 days ago. Here are the specs:

PCPartPicker Part List



Type|Item|Price

:----|:----|:----

CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor | $322.99 @ SuperBiiz

CPU Cooler | NZXT Kraken X62 Rev 2 98.17 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler | $136.44 @ Amazon

Motherboard | Gigabyte X570 GAMING X ATX AM4 Motherboard | $169.99 @ Newegg

Memory | Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory | $94.99 @ Amazon

Storage | Crucial P1 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | $66.95 @ Adorama

Storage | Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $39.99 @ Amazon

Video Card | Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB GAMING OC 3X Video Card |-

Case | Deepcool MATREXX 70 ATX Mid Tower Case | $71.98 @ Newegg

Power Supply | SeaSonic FOCUS 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply | $107.99 @ SuperBiiz

| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |

| Total | $1011.32

| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-31 05:14 EST-0500 |

Booted normally, installed windows 10, changed XMP profile to Profile 1 and RAM became 3200 instead of the default 2133. Everything was fine until i started playing games. In three different games i was experiencing BSOD, crashes to desktop and eventually corrupted game files. At some point it even broke the windows so i had to reinstall it. That didn't fix anything tho. After running various stress tests and benchmarks i think it's safe to say the cause is the RAM (or the DIMM slots actually, i dont have any other hardware to test).

Here are the things i tried so far and didn't work:

Updating and installing every possible driver.

Checked RAM firmware in the iCue app - said it was up to date anyways.

Updating BIOS - my BIOS was on version F3 which is the initial release version (for this mobo i guess). There were 4 other BIOS versions with very optimistic change notes about improved memory and XMP compatibilities and whatnot so i decided to give it a try. Sadly it didn't work.

Ran Windows Memory Diagnostics which showed no errors.

Another thing i noticed that might or might not be of any valuable information is that the RAM RGB LEDs (the default effect is vertical rainbow going from top to bottom) go out of sync after a short time of running without Corsair's iCue software.

I can't really try the other 2 DIMM slots because the pipe fittings of the CPU cooler are blocking the left-most slots. Also the ones im currently using were marked as the ones you should use when running 2 sticks of dual channel RAM on the mobo manual. What did work, however, is turning off the XMP profile back to Disabled thus running RAM on 2133MHz. This worked like a charm and managed to play the three initial games without a single crash or BSoD for a whole day. Does this mean it's not faulty RAM/Mobo? Anyway i decided to further and try some manual tuning. Now ive never done this so i was kinda scared to mess up a lot so i loaded the default 3200 XMP profile and then turned down the Frequency multiplied down to 3000 MHz. So far i played two entire games of Rainbow 6 Siege without a crash (for reference with 3200 MHz i could barely play one or two rounds). However, I will do some more testing with other games as well. So how bad is 3000 MHz compared to 3200? I mean i obviously paid for 3200 and afaik Ryzen really enjoys higher frequency. Next step is maybe take them to the shop i bought them from if they can test them and maybe give me a replacement. The manual increase adds 66 Mhz on each click so i guess i could test it once or twice more to see which is the highest stable. Apart from the frequency, there is also a literal ton of other settings which i`m not familiar with so i decided to leave them with the default for the XMP Profile 1.

One thing that caught my attention is the voltage. On default 2133 it's 1.20V, on XMP it's 1.35V. Ryzen Master also reports 1.35V. Now, i went back to my order info and clicked the exact same product i ordered (i actually got rid of most of the boxes when the whole thing was up and running) and the name goes like Memory 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR4 3200MHz, Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro, CMW16GX4M2C3200C16, 1.2V . Going through the site there is the same model (well few letters in the model name are different - CMW16GX4M2Z3200C16) that says 1.35V at the end which seems to be out of stock . There's also TUF gaming version also but mine isn't for sure. So is my RAM running on higher voltage than intended? Could this be the cause? If so, should i try to lower the voltage manually from the BIOS and could that lead to some serious damage?

Thanks in advance to everyone spending some of their holiday time to help a brother out. May you have a happy new year!
 
Although the Gaming X is definitely not a good board, the issue is most likely your memory. You could attempt to contact support to get a replacement since it wasn't able to run XMP.

1.35V is normal for 3200 Mhz XMP.

According to JEDEC Spec, 1.5V is the absolute safe maximum, but it is generally recommended to run only B die (which yours isn't) at 1.5V. 1.45V is a good limit for everything else, and if you want to be completely safe in the long run, 1.4V should be your goal for manual tuning.

3000Mhz and 3200Mhz does have a performance difference but its within 2-3 fps for most games, on average.
 

leetz0rR_

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Make sure your SOC is at 1.1v, if it's at 1.0v that's the problem.

Motherboards will automatically overvolt the SOC to 1.1v when you enable XMP, usually.
I would pusv the SOC to 1.1 and if that does not help I would increase the DramVoltage in 0.05v increments to see if it gets stable.

Ryzen Master shows VDDCR SOC 1.1. Is that what i`m looking for? Couldn't find anything with that name in the BIOS.
 

leetz0rR_

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I concur with @extreme_noob, sounds like a RAM issue, 1.35V is normal XMP speeds. I have the non-RGB version of your RAM and it works fine at XMP settings. OC'ing it however past its rated XMP speeds are a bit difficult since it's not B-Die, it's micron A-Die. So if you can't get it to 3200MHz then something is wrong with the memory sticks.

Running Thaipoon Burner it reports DRAM Manufacturer - Samsung and DRAM Die Revision - B
 
Running Thaipoon Burner it reports DRAM Manufacturer - Samsung and DRAM Die Revision - B
Download and install memtest86 to a usb drive and run the 4 pass default test (automatically runs from UEFI bootup.) Make sure the ram is using the XMP setting for 3200Mhz before starting the tests. If you get any errors, stop the test and either set voltage to 1.4v or manually set the speed to 3000Mhz, voltage to 1.35 and timings to the advertised for 3200Mhz. Try the test again and see if it will go through all 4 tests. This will take around 3-4 hours to complete if there are no errors.

https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm
 

prophet51

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I have the same problem with 2 x 16gb patriot sticks I recently bought, perfectly stable at 14cl3000Mhz but can't run the stock 3200mhz xmp profile unless I low the freq to 3066mhz. Memtest86+ will probably come up with a bunch of errors within 5min, I would return them in that case or try to get cl14 3000mhz+ working.
 
Id recommend resetting the bios to defaults, enabling your boot drive, and not changing anything else...see if the system runs without issues.

If all is good at defaults then enable the XMP mem profile and manually set 1.4v on the memory and try it.
 

Crashman

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Are you certain that your memory is RATED at 1.20V for its XMP?

First of all, your description means nothing, the only thing that tells you exactly what you have is the part number. So I followed your link, and followed the link on that page to Amazon. Is this the listing?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D1XCKWW
After far TOO MUCH LOOKING AROUND finally found that the page listed part number CMW16GX4M2C3200C16.
Googling that part number got me to this page:
https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categ.../Vengeance-PRO-RGB-Black/p/CMW16GX4M2C3200C16
Where I found that the rated voltage is 1.35V.
Why would it be rated at 1.35V? I have bad news for you: This is not DDR4-3200, it's DDR4-2133 that's been overclocked to DDR4-3200.
And I have worse news for you: EVERY DDR4-3200 kit you'll find is overclocked, they're all using either DDR4-2133, 2400, or 2666 ICs.
And it gets even worse: You're not going to find anything faster than DDR4-3200 that isn't based on ICs of the same range I just mentioned.

That's not to say that there ISN'T a problem with the voltage of your board: MOST motherboards CHEAT on voltage in order to trick buyers into thinking they're using safer settings than they're actually getting. I wouldn't be surprised if you put a meter on a slot and found out it was 1.365V.

And sometimes that bit of extra voltage hurts your stability. Not often, but sometimes. I'd try dropping it to 1.34V just to check.
 
That's not to say that there ISN'T a problem with the voltage of your board: MOST motherboards CHEAT on voltage in order to trick buyers into thinking they're using safer settings than they're actually getting. I wouldn't be surprised if you put a meter on a slot and found out it was 1.365V.

And sometimes that bit of extra voltage hurts your stability. Not often, but sometimes. I'd try dropping it to 1.34V just to check.
I know my own MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC sets ram voltage to 1.365 for automatic when manually setting any frequency above 2666Mhz and 1.355 when manually setting 1.35v. I wish I had done a bit more research before picking the board so I'd have one with finer voltage settings.
 

leetz0rR_

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The OP said "Running Thaipoon Burner it reports DRAM Manufacturer - Samsung and DRAM Die Revision - B "
It seemed stable for a while then i noticed it says CAS Latency 22 which isnt good from what i read. So im back at the start now. I really cant figure out the voltage part tho. In advanced memory settings there is profile ddr voltage that is greyed out and cannot be manually adjusted. It changes with the XMP profiles automatically 1.1.2for disabled and 1.35V for Profile 1. There is also advanced voltage settings which has DRAM Voltage (CH A/B). This one is set to Auto and shows 1.20V next to it. It can be manually changed. Is this the one i should swt to 1.35V and try to increase by 0.01 until i can run stable 3200 MHz CL16 ?
 
It seemed stable for a while then i noticed it says CAS Latency 22 which isnt good from what i read. So im back at the start now. I really cant figure out the voltage part tho. In advanced memory settings there is profile ddr voltage that is greyed out and cannot be manually adjusted. It changes with the XMP profiles automatically 1.1.2for disabled and 1.35V for Profile 1. There is also advanced voltage settings which has DRAM Voltage (CH A/B). This one is set to Auto and shows 1.20V next to it. It can be manually changed. Is this the one i should swt to 1.35V and try to increase by 0.01 until i can run stable 3200 MHz CL16 ?
Did you ever run memtest86? It will catch problems that Windows Memory diagnostic won't.
 

leetz0rR_

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Did you ever run memtest86? It will catch problems that Windows Memory diagnostic won't.
Well my flash drive died and i have to wait until next week to get a new one. I dont see Memtest64 getting recommended at all so i guess it's not reliable?
Currently running 3133 Mhz at CL16 and 1,35V and it's stable. I guess i will be leaving it that way until i can get Memtest86 testing the default and the XMP profiles.
 
Well my flash drive died and i have to wait until next week to get a new one. I dont see Memtest64 getting recommended at all so i guess it's not reliable?
Currently running 3133 Mhz at CL16 and 1,35V and it's stable. I guess i will be leaving it that way until i can get Memtest86 testing the default and the XMP profiles.
What is your base clock (usually BCLK in bios) set to? It should be 100Mhz +/- 0.5Mhz. What is the actual reported memory speed in bios or Windows when you set 3200Mhz?
 

leetz0rR_

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What is your base clock (usually BCLK in bios) set to? It should be 100Mhz +/- 0.5Mhz. What is the actual reported memory speed in bios or Windows when you set 3200Mhz?
Uhmm is it Host Clock Value ? Thats the closest as i cant find BCLK. It says 100.0Mhz but cannot be adjusted (maybe something else is set to auto).
What do you mean actual reported memory speed? Ryzen Master for example shows Memory and Fabric Clock as 1600.
Edit: Just noticed a side window in BIOS, BCLK is 100.20Mhz
 
Uhmm is it Host Clock Value ? Thats the closest as i cant find BCLK. It says 100.0Mhz but cannot be adjusted (maybe something else is set to auto).
What do you mean actual reported memory speed? Ryzen Master for example shows Memory and Fabric Clock as 1600.
Edit: Just noticed a side window in BIOS, BCLK is 100.20Mhz
That all looks normal.

If you haven't tried it yet, see if you can turn the water block so the tubes are in a different position so you can test using the other slots for dual channel mode.