trying to OC ram to 3000mhz. On start-up, PC shuts down, then boots up again.

[maxgeorgiou14]

Hello,

I have DDR4 Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB(2x8) 3000Mhz RAM. By default the RAM speed is set as 2133Mhz and I am trying to OC to 3000Mhz.

When I try using the XMP profile that is in there by default, which ups it to 3000Mhz and 1.35V, my PC shuts down then starts up again when I power on.

It boots up after this, but surely it shouldn't be doing this?

It also seems like the first restart when I change to 3000Mhz is fine, and then any restarts/boots after that, it will turn on, then shut down after a few seconds, then start up again and successfully boot.

My mobo is an Asrock Extreme4 Z370 and CPU is i5 8400.

Any help?

 

[geofelt]

If a motherboard does not like a ram setting, it will try to find one that works and try again.

When you finally boot, use cpu-Z to see what ram speed you are actually running.

 

[maxgeorgiou14]

So cpu-z shows the DRAM frequency as 1500 Mhz, which I assume is correct as it's half of 3000 and when I have it set to the default 2133mhz cpu-z shows 1066mhz.

 

[geofelt]

Sounds like your ram is working properly.
Perhaps the restart is a windows 10 thing.

 

[maxgeorgiou14]

It still seems like this shouldn't be happening.

It's strange because when I first change to the XMP profile and click save and exit on the BIOS, the PC restarts and boots into windows first time.

It's only on subsequent boots that this happens.

 

[geofelt]

Sometimes on a new motherboard, there are bios updates that fix ram compatibility issues.
You could check to see if asrock has an update that addresses this issue.
That said, I would be hesitant to update a bios until this spectre... thing gets sorted out.

Consider using sleep to ram instead of shutting down.
Sleep is a very low power state.
The process to sleep/wake is much faster.

 

[maxgeorgiou14]

Okay thank you for your help.

I've contacted Asrock as well to see if they know anything.

I noticed there is a BIOS update but I too am skeptical about updating, especially when everything else seems to be working fine, and this seems like a fairly small issue.

 

[maxgeorgiou14]

Okay so Asrock were helpful and I've fixed it.

This is what they replied to me with:

Hello,

1. That might be related to the default shutdown mode of Windows 10. Please disable Fast Startup in Windows and check if that helps:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4189-turn-off-fast-startup-windows-10-a.html#option1

2. Please load default BIOS settings via F9, load the XMP profile and save via F9 without changing other BIOS settings. What is the situation after this?

3. DDR4-3000 is not a natural RAM divider for the i5-8400. Please try loading the XMP profile and then set the DRAM Frequency to DDR4-2933. Does this work better?



It was No. 3 which worked for me (I didn't even realise CPUs had 'natural RAM dividers') but I thought I'd put the other two on here in case anyone else has a similar problem.

I think you were correct in saying that each time it reset the motherboard was changing the settings to something that it liked, I just couldn't figure out what it was changing, as it was still running at 3000Mhz rather than the 2933 I have it on now. It must have changed a setting which allowed it to work at 3000Mhz. But hey, the difference between 2933mhz and 3000mhz is negligible.