[SOLVED] Which ram for my mobo?

[hoefski]

I apologize as I have some basic knowledge but am basically an idiot when it comes to this topic.

I bought a ROG STRIX GA15DH prebuilt just over 2 years ago. Ryzen 7 3700, 2070 Super, nothing fancy. Didn't touch anything but been having some performance issues recently and realized it only has 16 gb of single channel ram so I thought I would try upgrading to 32 before buying a whole new pc. Only problem is I have no idea what kind of ram is compatible with my system. The motherboard is advertised as a GA15DH which from some googling I found this thread from this site: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/flash-motherboard-with-another-identical-board-bios.3741131/ which basically states ASUS just reskins their mobos and rebrands them with the prebuilt name. I suspect I actually have the exact same model which that guy linked (The Asus Prime B450M-K ) simply due to visually comparing my motherboard with the one linked but I could be very wrong. The one thing I'm almost certain is that it is b450 chipset. I looked up the QVL for the B450M-K and was left even more confused because there really weren't many 32 gig options. Why does the QVL list so many 4 * 4 or 8 * 8 setups when the motherboard only has 2 ram slots?

 

[Psycho381]

Hello! Your CPU supports ram speed up to 3200mhz and your MOBO support ram speed up to 4400mhz (OC), since you will buy new pc just buy two ram sticks DDR4, 16gb memory, 3200mhz, CL16 (timings) with XMP profile supported, buy a KIT, never mix 2 different rams. both ram sticks need to have same Frequency(Mhz), Timings(CL) and Voltage. if your current ram has same performance just buy additional ram stick which is the same one you already own if you can find it.

Just to confirm is this your mobo Picture?

Edit: What kind of performance issue do you exactly notice? Just runs a bit slower with new programs/games thank what you would prefer or something else? Upgrading to dual channel memory is the best upgrade you can do for the money, but that does not have to be the issue in this situation.

 

[hoefski]

Hello! Your CPU supports ram speed up to 3200mhz and your MOBO support ram speed up to 4400mhz (OC), since you will buy new pc just buy two ram sticks DDR4, 16gb memory, 3200mhz, CL16 (timings) with XMP profile supported, buy a KIT, never mix 2 different rams. both ram sticks need to have same Frequency(Mhz), Timings(CL) and Voltage. if your current ram has same performance just buy additional ram stick which is the same one you already own.

Just to confirm is this your mobo Picture?

Edit: What kind of performance issue do you exactly notice? Just runs a bit slower or something else? Upgrading to dual channel memory is the best upgrade you can do for the money, but that does not have to be the issue in this situation.

Thank you for the reply. That is very clear and concise advice which is much appreciated. As I said I am not certain that is the exact motherboard as they reskin them and don't specify which exact model they use when you buy the prebuilt. If I look in my system info it just says GA15DH which is not a motherboard model I can find anywhere. Based on the location of sockets/connectors/circuits/writing on the board it appears exactly the same as that board to me there's just a flashy ROG STRIX GAMER skin on top.

edit: Yes mainly degraded performance when gaming or having several tabs open on chrome. My main hope is I will experience some FPS increases or at least more consistent FPS in games like Escape from Tarkov which I'm told is very poorly optimized and demands a lot of memory resources.

 

[Psycho381]

Thank you for the reply. That is very clear and concise advice which is much appreciated. As I said I am not certain that is the exact motherboard as they reskin them and don't specify which exact model they use when you buy the prebuilt. If I look in my system info it just says GA15DH which is not a motherboard model I can find anywhere. Based on the location of sockets/connectors/circuits/writing on the board it appears exactly the same as that board to me there's just a flashy ROG STRIX GAMER skin on top.

edit: Yes mainly degraded performance when gaming or having several tabs open on chrome. My main hope is I will experience some FPS increases or at least more consistent FPS in games like Escape from Tarkov which I'm told is very poorly optimized and demands a lot of memory resources.

If the mobo is identical, I do not think there should be a problem. But your safest bet is to contact the store from where you bought the pc and ask them the same question, or literally any store which offers same pc. However even if it is not the same mobo, I highly doubt that supported ram speed is less than 3200mhz... Therefore you should not have any issue when installing the new ram with the performance I stated previously.
When buying ram stick to the well known brands. I had some bad experiences regarding enabling XMP profile with rams from less known brands.
Hope I was able to help you in some sort of way. Feel free to ask anything, there is no such a thing as stupid question, we are all here to help.

Btw, pls do not buy pre-builds, you do not get what you pay for, far from it... Buy your parts of choice then you can find people online to assemble the pc for you, or you can literally just walk into any PC store, find the guy who seems knowledgeable and ask him privately to assemble the pc for you, most of them are happy to earn some side money doing smth they love. That is what I did before I knew nothing about PCs. Or even better build it yourself, it is way easier than it seems, there many good step by step tutorials on youtube.

 

[hoefski]

If the mobo is identical, I do not think there should be a problem. But your safest bet is to contact the store from where you bought the pc and ask them the same question, or literally any store which offers same pc. However even if it is not the same mobo, I highly doubt that supported ram speed is less than 3200mhz... Therefore you should not have any issue when installing the new ram with the performance I stated previously.
When buying ram stick to the well known brands. I had some bad experiences regarding enabling XMP profile with rams from less known brands.
Hope I was able to help you in some sort of way. Feel free to ask anything, there is no such a thing as stupid question, we are all here to help.

Btw, pls do not buy pre-builds, you do not get what you pay for, far from it... Buy your parts of choice then you can find people online to assemble the pc for you, or you can literally just walk into any PC store, find the guy who seems knowledgeable and ask him privately to assemble the pc for you, most of them are happy to earn some side money doing smth they love. That is what I did before I knew nothing about PCs. Or even better build it yourself, it is way easier than it seems, there many good step by step tutorials on youtube.

That is a lot of help thank you very much, just the info I was after. I think I will pick up some Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200MHz based off your advice. This is actually the first prebuilt I got in quite some time, I built my last couple pc's with my brothers help but was just kind of forced to with how overpriced and unavailable GPU's were a couple years ago. Seeing the questionable reskinning of the mobo as well as realizing how garbage my current ram is reminded me why I stopped buying them in the first place so I will be definitely taking your advice and not buying a prebuilt ever again.

My biggest question is why when I look at the QVL for the B450M-K does it say 8 * 8 or 4 * 8 for different compatible ram sizes when there is only 2 slots available? Am I misunderstanding what that particular column is describing or is that the wrong QVL?

 

[Psycho381]

My biggest question is why when I look at the QVL for the B450M-K does it say 8 * 8 or 4 * 8 for different compatible ram sizes when there is only 2 slots available? Am I misunderstanding what that particular column is describing or is that the wrong QVL?

Might be wrong, but that is just the certain ram kit they used for testing, u can buy ram kit of 4 sticks and just use 2, the last column just includes dimm 1 and dimm 2. I checked another QVL for you mobo and it only includes a kit of maximum 2 ram sticks. https://pangoly.com/en/compatibility/asus-prime-b450m-k/ram

Edit: If was able to help your or somebody else in the future, mark the thread as "resolved" by clicking the trophy icon on the best answer, not that I care for the trophy, but it just shows the your appreciation to the person who spent time to help you, and it spares time of other people ( I can not count how many times I spent time reading a thread just to find that the issue has been resolved, while I could have spent that time helping someone who is still searching for the answer). All the best 👍.

 

[hoefski]

Might be wrong, but that is just the certain ram kit they used for testing, u can buy ram kit of 4 sticks and just use 2, the last colum just includes dimm 1 and dimm 2. I checked another QVL for you mobo and it only includes a kit of maximum 2 ram sticks. https://pangoly.com/en/compatibility/asus-prime-b450m-k/ram

Edit: If was able to help your or somebody else in the future, mark the thread as "resolved" by clicking the trophy icon on the answer, not that I care for the trophy, but it just shows the your appreciation to the person who spent time to help you, and it spares time of other people ( I can not count how many times I spent time reading a thread just to find that the issue has been resolved, while I could have spent that time helping someone who is still searching for the answer).

Ahh ok that makes sense. Thanks a lot for the help! Literally spent hours trying to google it myself and couldn't understand it all but you cleared it right up. Really appreciate that. Take care friend .