Question Ryzen 3000 RAM help

thomasgreco0499

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May 19, 2019
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I recently built this system:



Ryzen 9 3900x

MSI Meg Ace x570

Gskill Trident Z 3600c15d

EVGA RTX 2080ti black

Seasonic 650W gold psu



On first boot, I couldn’t post under XMP. I flashed new bios and was able to boot. However, system was unstable with dimm voltage at 1.35 V. When I upped voltage to 1.45, random reboots stopped (seemingly) and memtest stopped spitting errors.



However, this morning my PC force rebooted again. I am getting no error codes on board. Could this be a power setting/software issue? I really don’t want to start returning board. Thanks.



Temps are normal and voltage readings from PSU in hardware monitor are normal.



EDIT: these reboots also seem to be pretty random. I can be running meaningless tasks or be under load. Seem to happen when I am not near computer though. Can it be something related to sleep mode?
 
What's the model of your RAM?
I didn't see any G-Skill Trident RAM or 3600MHz listed in the QVL as compatible with the MSI Meg Ace x570.
That could be causing the instability...a future BIOS update should fix that.

Bring the RAM speed down to 3466MHz and see if the random reboots stop.
You might need to enter the timings manually to 3600MHz.
 
How many DIMMs are in this kit?

What slots are they installed in? They SHOULD be installed in the A2 and B2 slots, which are the second and fourth slots over from the CPU socket.

Keep in mind, this platform is new and is going to have growing pains at first. You might be wise to simply reduce the frequency of your memory to 3466mhz at the stock voltage and see if that cures the problem until compatibility is better ironed out by future BIOS updates, which will almost certainly be coming with some regularity over the coming weeks.

Also, how old is your Seasonic PSU and what is the EXACT model of it?
 

thomasgreco0499

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May 19, 2019
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How many DIMMs are in this kit?

What slots are they installed in? They SHOULD be installed in the A2 and B2 slots, which are the second and fourth slots over from the CPU socket.

Keep in mind, this platform is new and is going to have growing pains at first. You might be wise to simply reduce the frequency of your memory to 3466mhz at the stock voltage and see if that cures the problem until compatibility is better ironed out by future BIOS updates, which will almost certainly be coming with some regularity over the coming weeks.

Also, how old is your Seasonic PSU and what is the EXACT model of it?
I have the 2 8Gb dimms in the 2nd and 4th slots from CPU. PSU is Seasonic Focus 650 Watt 80+ Gold Semi-Modular PSU. brand new.
 

thomasgreco0499

Commendable
May 19, 2019
26
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1,530
What's the model of your RAM?
I didn't see any G-Skill Trident RAM or 3600MHz listed in the QVL as compatible with the MSI Meg Ace x570.
That could be causing the instability...a future BIOS update should fix that.

Bring the RAM speed down to 3466MHz and see if the random reboots stop.
You might need to enter the timings manually to 3600MHz.
The new MSI x570 boards are all compatible with 3600 mhz.
 
The new MSI x570 boards are all compatible with 3600 mhz.
Yes, that's true...all x570 boards support 3600MHz RAM but your RAM model might not be fully compatible with your motherboard...at least not at the moment.

I tried Corsair LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) @ 3600MHz on an ASUS and ASRock boards
Manually set to 18-19-19-39 1.35V and it worked.

It did not worked out the box @ 3600MHz or XMP
By the way I think 1.45V is a little high.
 

thomasgreco0499

Commendable
May 19, 2019
26
0
1,530
Yes, that's true...all x570 boards support 3600MHz RAM but your RAM model might not be fully compatible with your motherboard...at least not at the moment.

I tried Corsair LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) @ 3600MHz on an ASUS and ASRock boards
Manually set to 18-19-19-39 1.35V and it worked.

It did not worked out the box @ 3600MHz or XMP
By the way I think 1.45V is a little high.
Where do you see the compatibility list?

And b-die is stable for daily use all the way up to 1.5 V
 
ANY DDR4 is capable of up to 1.5v, well, pretty much. Technically.

I don't recommend it though, unless absolutely necessary AND it's probably going to incur a big penalty on CPU (And memory) thermals at that high of a voltage. You shouldn't ever need to use anything higher than MAYBE about 1.4v, regardless of speed if it's supported by the motherboard, unless you are running more than two DIMMs.

If you do, it's probably indicative of a problem of some kind, whether incompatibility or cpu or motherboard issue.

So, good PSU, memory is the correct slots. I think the problem is likely compatibility, although that's weird since those are top notch sticks. but they are CL15, and AMD systems don't really like the odd numbered timings. At least they haven't on the previous platforms. You might check the BIOS to see if there is a setting called "DRAM odd ratio mode" and if there is, enable it.

Or, manually change the timings to 16-16-16-36 at 3600mhz, and see if that helps. It might. I've seen a lot of Ryzen systems that would not work properly with CL15 or CL17 sticks due to the odd DRAM ratio issue.
 

thomasgreco0499

Commendable
May 19, 2019
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1,530
ANY DDR4 is capable of up to 1.5v, well, pretty much. Technically.

I don't recommend it though, unless absolutely necessary AND it's probably going to incur a big penalty on CPU (And memory) thermals at that high of a voltage. You shouldn't ever need to use anything higher than MAYBE about 1.4v, regardless of speed if it's supported by the motherboard, unless you are running more than two DIMMs.

If you do, it's probably indicative of a problem of some kind, whether incompatibility or cpu or motherboard issue.

So, good PSU, memory is the correct slots. I think the problem is likely compatibility, although that's weird since those are top notch sticks. but they are CL15, and AMD systems don't really like the odd numbered timings. At least they haven't on the previous platforms. You might check the BIOS to see if there is a setting called "DRAM odd ratio mode" and if there is, enable it.

Or, manually change the timings to 16-16-16-36 at 3600mhz, and see if that helps. It might. I've seen a lot of Ryzen systems that would not work properly with CL15 or CL17 sticks due to the odd DRAM ratio issue.
I just passed memtest86 at 3466c15.
 
So that's cool. Now see what it can with this.

Final testing with Prime95

It is highly advisable that you do a final test using Prime95 version 26.6 or the latest version WITH AVX and AVX2 disabled, and run a custom configured Blend test. You can also use the Blend mode option as is, but after a fair amount of personal testing, asking questions from some long time members with engineering level degrees that have forgotten more about memory architectures than you or I will ever know, and gathering opinions from a wide array of memory enthusiasts around the web, I'm pretty confident that the custom option is a lot more likely to find errors with the memory configuration, and faster, if there are any to be found.

Please note as this is rather important, if you prefer, or have problems running version 26.6 because you have a newer platform that doesn't want to play nice with version 26.6, you can use the latest version of Prime95 with the Custom test selected but you will need to make the following change.

In the bottom of the Torture test selection popup menu there will be some options for disabling AVX. I recommend that you do so, not because we are doing thermal testing and require a steady state workload (Which AVX wouldn't affect anyhow, as Computronix explained to me), but because the last thing you need during memory testing is having to worry about CPU temperatures, and you will, with AVX enabled.

So, uncheck the option for AVX2. That will un-gray the option for AVX, and uncheck that box as well.

Now open Prime95.

Click on "Custom". Input a value of 512k in the minimum FFT size field. Leave the maximum FFT size field at 4096k. In the "Memory to use" field you should take a look at your current memory allocation in either HWinfo or system resource monitor. Whatever "free" memory is available, input approximately 75% of that amount. So if you currently have 16GB of installed memory, and approximately 3GB are in use or reserved leaving somewhere in the neighborhood of 13GB free, then enter something close to 75% of that amount.

So if you have 13GB free, or something reasonably close to that, then 75% of THAT would be 9.75GB, which, when multiplies times 1024 will roughly equal about 9984MB. You can average things out by simply selecting the closest multiple of 1024 to that amount just to keep it simple, so we'll say 10 x 1024= 10240mb and enter that amount in the field for "Memory to use (MB)". We are still well within the 13GB of unused memory BUT we have left enough memory unused so that if Windows decides to load some other process or background program, or an already loaded one suddenly needs more, we won't run into a situation where the system errors out due to lack of memory because we've dedicated it all to testing.

I've experienced false errors and system freezes during this test from over allocating memory, so stick to the method above and you should be ok.


Moving right along, do not change the time to run each FFT size. Leave that set to 15 minutes.

Click run and run the Custom test for 8 hours. If it passed Memtest86 and it passes 8 hours of the Custom test, the memory is 100% stable, or as close to it as you are ever likely to get but a lot of experts in the area of memory configuration suggest that running the extended Windows memory diagnostic test is also a pretty good idea too.

If you get errors, (and you will want to run HWinfo alongside Prime95 so you can periodically monitor each thread as Prime will not stop running just because one worker drops out, so you need to watch HWinfo to see if there are any threads not showing 100% usage which means one of the workers errored and was dropped) then you need to either change the timings, change the DRAM voltage or change the DRAM termination voltage, which should be approximately half of the full DRAM voltage.

There are also other bios settings that can affect the memory configuration AND stability, such as the VCCIO and system agent voltages, so if you have problems with stability at higher clock speeds you might want to look at increasing those slightly. Usually, for Intel at least, something in the neighborhood of 1.1v on both those is pretty safe. There are a substantial number of guides out there covering those two settings, but most of them are found within CPU overclocking guides so look there in guides relevant to your platform.

As a further measure of assurance that your WHOLE configuration is stable, you can download and run Realbench for 8 hours. If the system freezes or fails when running Realbench with your full memory amount set, try running it again but select only half your amount of installed memory.
 

thomasgreco0499

Commendable
May 19, 2019
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So that's cool. Now see what it can with this.

Final testing with Prime95

It is highly advisable that you do a final test using Prime95 version 26.6 or the latest version WITH AVX and AVX2 disabled, and run a custom configured Blend test. You can also use the Blend mode option as is, but after a fair amount of personal testing, asking questions from some long time members with engineering level degrees that have forgotten more about memory architectures than you or I will ever know, and gathering opinions from a wide array of memory enthusiasts around the web, I'm pretty confident that the custom option is a lot more likely to find errors with the memory configuration, and faster, if there are any to be found.

Please note as this is rather important, if you prefer, or have problems running version 26.6 because you have a newer platform that doesn't want to play nice with version 26.6, you can use the latest version of Prime95 with the Custom test selected but you will need to make the following change.

In the bottom of the Torture test selection popup menu there will be some options for disabling AVX. I recommend that you do so, not because we are doing thermal testing and require a steady state workload (Which AVX wouldn't affect anyhow, as Computronix explained to me), but because the last thing you need during memory testing is having to worry about CPU temperatures, and you will, with AVX enabled.

So, uncheck the option for AVX2. That will un-gray the option for AVX, and uncheck that box as well.

Now open Prime95.

Click on "Custom". Input a value of 512k in the minimum FFT size field. Leave the maximum FFT size field at 4096k. In the "Memory to use" field you should take a look at your current memory allocation in either HWinfo or system resource monitor. Whatever "free" memory is available, input approximately 75% of that amount. So if you currently have 16GB of installed memory, and approximately 3GB are in use or reserved leaving somewhere in the neighborhood of 13GB free, then enter something close to 75% of that amount.

So if you have 13GB free, or something reasonably close to that, then 75% of THAT would be 9.75GB, which, when multiplies times 1024 will roughly equal about 9984MB. You can average things out by simply selecting the closest multiple of 1024 to that amount just to keep it simple, so we'll say 10 x 1024= 10240mb and enter that amount in the field for "Memory to use (MB)". We are still well within the 13GB of unused memory BUT we have left enough memory unused so that if Windows decides to load some other process or background program, or an already loaded one suddenly needs more, we won't run into a situation where the system errors out due to lack of memory because we've dedicated it all to testing.

I've experienced false errors and system freezes during this test from over allocating memory, so stick to the method above and you should be ok.


Moving right along, do not change the time to run each FFT size. Leave that set to 15 minutes.

Click run and run the Custom test for 8 hours. If it passed Memtest86 and it passes 8 hours of the Custom test, the memory is 100% stable, or as close to it as you are ever likely to get but a lot of experts in the area of memory configuration suggest that running the extended Windows memory diagnostic test is also a pretty good idea too.

If you get errors, (and you will want to run HWinfo alongside Prime95 so you can periodically monitor each thread as Prime will not stop running just because one worker drops out, so you need to watch HWinfo to see if there are any threads not showing 100% usage which means one of the workers errored and was dropped) then you need to either change the timings, change the DRAM voltage or change the DRAM termination voltage, which should be approximately half of the full DRAM voltage.

There are also other bios settings that can affect the memory configuration AND stability, such as the VCCIO and system agent voltages, so if you have problems with stability at higher clock speeds you might want to look at increasing those slightly. Usually, for Intel at least, something in the neighborhood of 1.1v on both those is pretty safe. There are a substantial number of guides out there covering those two settings, but most of them are found within CPU overclocking guides so look there in guides relevant to your platform.

As a further measure of assurance that your WHOLE configuration is stable, you can download and run Realbench for 8 hours. If the system freezes or fails when running Realbench with your full memory amount set, try running it again but select only half your amount of installed memory.
Wow after about 20 min no workers have crashed. This is fantastic. Running at 3600 mhz each worker was crashing within minutes. How long do you advise I run this stress test for? I’m not really comfortable with eight hours. Thanks so much for the help
 
I’m not really comfortable with eight hours.

Why? Anything less is probably a waste of time. Anything more is just added insurance, but at 8 hours it's very unlikely you'll run into issues if you haven't by then. I've seen a lot of configurations run fine for 6 or 7 hours, and then error out, needing further adjustments. Let me just pass this on, which is from a notable source and is agreed with by most I have asked.

Now, for "Memory To Use", make sure you enter your own value. I highly recommend 75% of your total capacity. If you have say, 16GB, then your capacity = 16 x 1024 - 25% = 12288MB. For 8GB, that value would be 6144MB. Since I have 32GB, I'll be using 24576 to stress test.

Once this starts, let it run for several hours. I personally let mine run for about 8-12 hours, depending on how I feel and how much I've tinkered from my last stable profile, but I do not recommend running for less than 8 hours. I know it's tempting to cut corners, but memory instability is not a game you want to play. It can seriously corrupt your windows installation, and require a fresh install. Take this part seriously.

As for why we use the settings above, allow me to explain. 512k-1024k is hard on the IMC and IO lanes. 2048k+ is hard on your ram. By setting the range at 512-4096, we not only stress the IMC and IO Lanes, we also stress the memory itself. Be warned: 1344k and 2688k are also included in this range, and are the hardest stress on vCore. If your CPU is unstable by any means, it will fail this, and will likely hold you back on memory overclocking. Always make sure your CPU is 100% stable before attempting memory overclocking. The less variables involved, the better.

For those of you with Haswell, and worried about that old myth of Prime95 killing CPU's, understand this. This range lacks 448k, which was the hardest FFT to test on FIVR. You should be fine here.
 

thomasgreco0499

Commendable
May 19, 2019
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Why? Anything less is probably a waste of time. Anything more is just added insurance, but at 8 hours it's very unlikely you'll run into issues if you haven't by then. I've seen a lot of configurations run fine for 6 or 7 hours, and then error out, needing further adjustments. Let me just pass this on, which is from a notable source and is agreed with by most I have asked.
I don't think it is going to turn my pc into a space heater, but I am not necessarily looking for a "Prime95 proof" OC. I kinda just wanted to get my system running stably so I can run my daily programs for school, work, etc. The fact that my old profile couldn't survive 30 seconds under prime95 stress test and Imy config now can brings solace, but I'll probably just run the test for eight hours anyway to be sure.

Thanks again.
 
That would be a good idea. I usually run these kinds of tests either overnight or I run them during the day while binging movies or tv series, or doing chores/tasks. Goes by before you know it. One thing to keep in mind is that Prime won't tell you explicitly when a worker drops out so it's a good idea to run HWinfo alongside it, and periodically check to see if any cores are showing less than 100% utilization. If they are, then a worker has dropped out due to an error.
 
I don't think it is going to turn my pc into a space heater, but I am not necessarily looking for a "Prime95 proof" OC. I kinda just wanted to get my system running stably so I can run my daily programs for school, work, etc. The fact that my old profile couldn't survive 30 seconds under prime95 stress test and Imy config now can brings solace, but I'll probably just run the test for eight hours anyway to be sure.

Thanks again.
I usually run two apps at the same time (Prime95 and Unigine valley) with MSI Afterburner running to keep a log ...no more than two hours long.
I have found that if you have any issues it will show within 15 to 30 minutes or even less.

I just built two systems and that's how I was able to keep them both stable by setting the RAM at 3466MHz instead of 3600MHz.
Then changing timings I brought it up to 3600MHz,
By the way, couldn't see any difference in performance between 3466MHz and 3600MHz.
Like you, I got RAM that wasn't listed as tested by the motherboard manufacturer since I got a good deal.
I know that in the coming months there will be BIOS updates that will allow more RAM modules to be compatible with the X570 chipset....just as previous ones.
 

thomasgreco0499

Commendable
May 19, 2019
26
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1,530
ANY DDR4 is capable of up to 1.5v, well, pretty much. Technically.

I don't recommend it though, unless absolutely necessary AND it's probably going to incur a big penalty on CPU (And memory) thermals at that high of a voltage. You shouldn't ever need to use anything higher than MAYBE about 1.4v, regardless of speed if it's supported by the motherboard, unless you are running more than two DIMMs.

If you do, it's probably indicative of a problem of some kind, whether incompatibility or cpu or motherboard issue.

So, good PSU, memory is the correct slots. I think the problem is likely compatibility, although that's weird since those are top notch sticks. but they are CL15, and AMD systems don't really like the odd numbered timings. At least they haven't on the previous platforms. You might check the BIOS to see if there is a setting called "DRAM odd ratio mode" and if there is, enable it.

Or, manually change the timings to 16-16-16-36 at 3600mhz, and see if that helps. It might. I've seen a lot of Ryzen systems that would not work properly with CL15 or CL17 sticks due to the odd DRAM ratio issue.
Thanks for all your help. I was actually running 3466 mhz 16-15-15-15-35 because geardown mode was enabled (ryzen doesn't like odd numbered cas latencies). I don't understand why 3466 --> 3600 mhz would cause random reboots so I bumped up the frequency and passed memtest, and then passed prime95 for 7 whole hours before crashing. I am really stuck on what to do next. Do you think my power supply is too weak? I hjeard some people saying irregular current through an outlet can cause frequent restarts, but I can a system through this outlet in the past. I tried plugging the system into its own outlet and not connecting it to a surge protector with my monitors.

My event logs are just showing the following:

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

-System

-Provider
[ Name]Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
[ Guid]{331c3b3a-2005-44c2-ac5e-77220c37d6b4}

EventID41

Version6

Level1

Task63

Opcode0

Keywords0x8000400000000002

-TimeCreated
[ SystemTime]2019-07-14T08:58:45.120220900Z

EventRecordID2951

Correlation

-Execution
[ ProcessID]4
[ ThreadID]8

ChannelSystem

ComputerDESKTOP-SGCVL3M

-Security
[ UserID]S-1-5-18

-EventData

BugcheckCode0

BugcheckParameter10x0

BugcheckParameter20x0

BugcheckParameter30x0

BugcheckParameter40x0

SleepInProgress0

PowerButtonTimestamp0

BootAppStatus0

Checkpoint0

ConnectedStandbyInProgressfalse

SystemSleepTransitionsToOn0

CsEntryScenarioInstanceId0

BugcheckInfoFromEFIfalse

CheckpointStatus0
 

mamasan2000

Distinguished
BANNED
I've been doing some memory OC the last week. I can't be bothered with running any test for hours on end so I just fire up TestMem 5, run it for 2-3 mins. Bottom of page: http://testmem.tz.ru/testmem5.htm
Either that or Memtest.

if that passes, I start a game.
Division 2, AC: Odyssey. In almost all memory instability I've had, the game crashes within the hour. That is how I know.
Also, if webbrowser closes or pages don't want to load = instability. Dead bird-icon on some pages. Don't know if it's the website or the webbrowser showing me that pic but I run Vivaldi in that case.

Within a day of normal PC usage I generally know if it's stable or not but certainly after a week.
I don't run anything critical during that timeperiod.
 
No offense to you specifically, really, but anybody who is overclocking their memory and "can't be bothered with running tests for hours on end" is either seriously uninformed or is just plain foolish, to put it nicely without using the terminology I'd prefer to use.

If you're going to overclock your memory, do the work. If you're not going to do the work, don't overclock your memory. Period. End of story.

And by "overclock", I don't mean running it at it's "rated" advertised speed, I mean actually overclocking. Taking the frequency beyond what the manufacturer pre-programmed it's profile at OR reducing or "tightening" the primary, secondary or tertiary timings.

As for not being able to get this running right at 3600mhz. I'd stop fretting about it. There is very little difference in performance between 3466mhz and 3600mhz, so run them there for now. It's likely that at some point in the near future there will be quality updates to the BIOS firmware that grant greater compatibility and stability in the are of memory support, so I'd wait for that. If it's not working now, it's probably not because of anything you are doing wrong. Until several months after 2nd gen Ryzen came out, very few people, and only with the highest end ICs, could get past 2933mhz, so this is not a new thing regardless that AMD has said memory up to 3600mhz is supported. Supported? Yes.

Guaranteed to be stable across the board? Nobody does that on any platform for every possible configuration and set of sticks.
 

thomasgreco0499

Commendable
May 19, 2019
26
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No offense to you specifically, really, but anybody who is overclocking their memory and "can't be bothered with running tests for hours on end" is either seriously uninformed or is just plain foolish, to put it nicely without using the terminology I'd prefer to use.

If you're going to overclock your memory, do the work. If you're not going to do the work, don't overclock your memory. Period. End of story.

And by "overclock", I don't mean running it at it's "rated" advertised speed, I mean actually overclocking. Taking the frequency beyond what the manufacturer pre-programmed it's profile at OR reducing or "tightening" the primary, secondary or tertiary timings.

As for not being able to get this running right at 3600mhz. I'd stop fretting about it. There is very little difference in performance between 3466mhz and 3600mhz, so run them there for now. It's likely that at some point in the near future there will be quality updates to the BIOS firmware that grant greater compatibility and stability in the are of memory support, so I'd wait for that. If it's not working now, it's probably not because of anything you are doing wrong. Until several months after 2nd gen Ryzen came out, very few people, and only with the highest end ICs, could get past 2933mhz, so this is not a new thing regardless that AMD has said memory up to 3600mhz is supported. Supported? Yes.

Guaranteed to be stable across the board? Nobody does that on any platform for every possible configuration and set of sticks.
Yeah it was not a problem of not wanting to be bothered, but moreso I’ve had systems in the past that have been stable (for my use case - accounting productivity and gaming) and failed prime95. I get that though. Thank you for your help. I was concerned because I was messaged by someone with the same board-dimm-cpu config that had no problems at xmp. he seemed like he didnt do any extensive testing, however. seem to be stable again at 3466 mhz. thanks again
 
The good thing about it is that it's not an all or nothing thing. You can play around with it as you please, or revisit it any time a new bios version is released.

It's possible as well that the sticks they have have looser timings, or different ICs, or any number of variables that could make a difference. Keep in mind, even if somebody else has a memory kit that has the EXACT same part number and specifications as yours, that absolutely does not mean that they have the same sticks. Manufacturers tend to use what they have on hand from production run to production run, or one batch to another. Specifically, I've seen G.Skill use the exact same part number for three distinctly different memory modules, as seen here:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/amd-ram-compatibility.3210050/#post-19785792

Which means that just because a specific kit worked on somebody else's board and CPU, even though they were the same model as yours, doesn't always mean it will work on yours ESPECIALLY if we are talking about kits that are outside the standard JEDEC specifications for a given platform. And that's without factoring in the idea that his CPU and your CPU are different, regardless that they are the same. Every CPU has some differences.
 
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