[SOLVED] Random Restarts / New RAM wrong frequency

[TheatricalGamer]

I am pulling my hair out here, and would appreciate some help. I recently upgraded to G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200Mhz DIMM CAS 16 F4-3200C16D-32GTZR on my build and am running into problems. Everything seemed to be going fine, briefly. However it keeps shutting down and restarting immediately at random but about every 10-20 minutes or less. I enabled the XMP profile in the BiOS and it recognized the timing and the voltage that the manufacturer recommends. But I had to manually set the frequency to 3200Mhz (which is supposed to be supported by both my MoB and CPU).
So then I went back into BiOS and set the frequency to 3000Mhz. That locked me on the boot screen with no input from the keyboard. Powered off, unplugged, held power button for 15 seconds, and then cleared CMOS. Powered right back up. Now, however it is reading the RAM at 2133Mhz - eventhough the remainder of the timing and voltage are correct. ANY help is greatly appreciated!

Everything is less than 45 days old. Drivers are all up to date. Windows is updated. Temps aren't stellar as the case needs better cooling but are well within safe temps.
-Asrock B450 Steel Series MoB
-AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU
-Zotac Geforce GTX 1660 Ti GPU
-32GB 2x16 DDR4 G.Skill TridentZ RGB (new today)
-500GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD (Windows) (new today)
-120GB WD SATA SSD (Render Cache)
-1TB WD HDD (Storage)
-Seasonic 12III Bronze 500W PSU

 

[Darkbreeze]

Make sure you have the most recent motherboard BIOS version installed. If you do not, then update to the latest version.

After completing that or if you are already on the latest version, you will want to make sure your memory modules are in the correct slots because it sounds like there's a strong chance they aren't.

They should be installed in the 2nd and 4th slots over from the CPU socket. Those are the DDR4_A2 and DDR4_B2 slots. If the memory is not in those slots, move it to those slots and then do a hard reset of the BIOS EXACTLY as follows.


Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes, press the power button on the case for 30 seconds. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

 

[TheatricalGamer]

Thank you for your quick reply! The RAM is in the correct slots. I think I am running the latest motherboard bios version but I will double check then follow the CMOS reset as you outlined, exactly.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok.

 

[TheatricalGamer]

Ok.

Turns out that there was an update to the bios version that better supported Matisse cores. Didn't have to do the CMOS reset. I've stress tested it for 30 minutes now and it is working perfectly at 3200hz. I also ran a UserBenchmark and it actually recognized the RAM this time instead of saying Unknown. Thanks for your help! Flashing the Bios without a battery backup is rather nerve racking

 

[Darkbreeze]

Cool man. Glad it was an easy fix.