[SOLVED] Windows boot time when overclocking DDR5 RAM on AM5

[crisluni88]

Hi!

I have just updated my pc to AM5:

Ryzen 5 7600 X
Asus Tuf Gaming B650-plus
MSI MSG A850G PCI Express 5.0
RTX 4090 FE graphics card
Samsung 970 EVO M.2
32 Gb RAM DDR5

First I used this RAM: Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) 5200MT/s DDR5 CL36. When setting the frequency to 5200 MHz with AMD EXPO profile, the boot time was around 21 seconds. Then I put the frequency to 5600 MHz and although the system was stable, the boot time increased to 35-37 seconds. So I thought I was doing something wrong with the overclock.

Now I have this RAM: Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) 600MT/s DDR5 CL36. With AMD EXPO I can set the frequency to 6000 MHz and the system is stable (doing some tests, gaming...) but the boot time is also high (35-37 seconds). If the frequency is decreased to 5600 MHz (also with the AMD EXPO), the boot time reaches the same high values.

Anyone could know why the boot time is increased with higher RAM frequencies?

Below I put two screenshots from CPU-Z, just in case it helps:

Thank you!!!!

Cheers!

 

[bill001g]

Go into task manager and look at the startup tab. Most times you will see something at the top that says bios time. This is the time taken before the windows os boot starts.

This is some number your motherboard bios provides but I am not sure what it actually includes.

Maybe check with different settings, I suspect the bios is doing some more memory checking or something.

In the long run does it really matter how fast the boot time is.

 

[geofelt]

Ryzen is very particular about ram.
If the bios does not like the ram settings specified, it will try to find a suitable setting that works.
That takes a bit of time.
You might look at CPU-Z to see what settings are actually in use.

And, why not use sleep to ram(no hibernate)
That puts the pc and monitor into a very low power state that is essentially power off.
Sleep/wake becomes only a handful of seconds.

 

[crisluni88]

Go into task manager and look at the startup tab. Most times you will see something at the top that says bios time. This is the time taken before the windows os boot starts.

This is some number your motherboard bios provides but I am not sure what it actually includes.

Maybe check with different settings, I suspect the bios is doing some more memory checking or something.

In the long run does it really matter how fast the boot time is.

Thank you! I checked that number and it is 28 seconds.

It seems that the BIOS logo takes a lot of time to be displayed, so maybe there is some more checking there...

 

[crisluni88]

Ryzen is very particular about ram.
If the bios does not like the ram settings specified, it will try to find a suitable setting that works.
That takes a bit of time.
You might look at CPU-Z to see what settings are actually in use.

And, why not use sleep to ram(no hibernate)
That puts the pc and monitor into a very low power state that is essentially power off.
Sleep/wake becomes only a handful of seconds.

Thank you!! I just put two screenshots from CPU-Z.. I have no idea if they can help hahaha

 

[crisluni88]

I found a solution!!! I updated the BIOS to he 28/08/2023 version and then modify the "Memory Context Restore" to "enable" in the BIOS.

Now, the boot time is 23 seconds from power on to Windows. So that's a nice reduction from almost one minute to less than 30 seconds 🥳🥳