Question RAM question - CL13/14 out of 4 CL16 "incompatible" sticks? [only serious answers please]

[Maped333]

Lately I found out that I could put two sticks of 8GB as an addition to my newer 2 sticks of 16GB giving me a total of 48GB accessible memory. No errors, no crashes.

I noticed that after adding the new sticks I got different CL values. Is CL13 48GB 930MHz RAM better/worse than CL16 32GB 1600MHz? What is the math there? I found some calculations but none did explain what is happening.

I am unable to turn on XMP2.0 on 48GB configuration (mainboard ASRock Master SLI x470) but it seems it does not matter since it is forced quad memory setup. My CPU is AMD 5 2600.

I work as a video editor and do some 3D modelling and compositing and I did not notice any significant difference in workflow speeds.

Some screenshots of this wonder -

https://imgur.com/a/zGFHIT8

View: https://imgur.com/a/zGFHIT8

Is this some kind of phenomenon I do not understand? Is that wrong? What is going on here?

 

[k1114]

The ram is defaulting to a lower speed so it will be stable. Since all sticks can run the same speed and latency, you can likely oc manually (since xmp won't work) and get it to run with just a bit more voltage to compensate for all 4 dimms being used. As for which is better, it's situational. If it was just about cl and speed, 3200/16 is faster than 1866/13 but it's also 48gb vs 36gb. Even within the same software, some work wants more ram and may not benefit with more speed or may not need as much ram and the speed helps. You'd have to benchmark your work to see what is better but I'd just suggest ocing and get all the benefits.

 

[Maped333]

The ram is defaulting to a lower speed so it will be stable. Since all sticks can run the same speed and latency, you can likely oc manually (since xmp won't work) and get it to run with just a bit more voltage to compensate for all 4 dimms being used. As for which is better, it's situational. If it was just about cl and speed, 3200/16 is faster than 1866/13 but it's also 48gb vs 36gb. Even within the same software, some work wants more ram and may not benefit with more speed or may not need as much ram and the speed helps. You'd have to benchmark your work to see what is better but I'd just suggest ocing and get all the benefits.

Sorry for replying so late. You were right. I decided to go with 48Gb. For my worklflow it was working much nicer but as you mentioned. For many applications it would not be as much.