3000MHz RAM only showing as 2166MHz with ASUS® STRIX B350-F - advice please?

[[email protected]]

Hi all,

I thought I'd get round to posting the spec of my newly PCS built desktop PC:

Case ~ NZXT S340 MID TOWER GAMING CASE (BLACK/BLUE)
Processor ~ AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six Core CPU (3.2GHz-3.6GHz/19MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard ~ ASUS® STRIX B350-F GAMING (DDR4, USB 3.0, 6Gb/s)
Memory ~ 8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card ~ 3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP
Hard Disk ~ 500GB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
Processor Cooling ~ Super Quiet Titan DragonFly Heatpipe AMD CPU Cooler
Operating System # Windows 10 x64

It's going to be used for some light gaming and I used cinebench to compare it to my old Dell XPS, the new machine scored 1127 on the CPU and 108 Open GL.

I noticed very quickly that my 3000MHz 2x4GB Corsair RAM was not being recognised at that speed, it's only showing as 2166MHz (when in CMD, I type 'wmic MEMORYCHIP get speed'). My ram chips are in DIMM slots A2 and B2 as per the PCS build.

I tried to read up on this issue and decided to updated my bios to v3803. This meant that in my bios utility screen that the Ai Overclock tuner D.O.C.P option I could now select Memory Frequency DDR4-3000Mhz. Being a bit of a noob I thought this would sort it, but no....

I have read somewhere that due to AMD Ryzen processor limitations, more than DDR4-2666 is supported by one DIMM per Channel only, can someone explain if this is my issue, or was their actually no point me ever needing to buy 3000MHz ram, I could have saved a few quid on 2666?

Anyway, what do you think of this spec, did I end up with a well balanced machine or have I failed miserably?


thanks

Lee

 

[Oussebon]

The spec's fine.

3000MHz (which seems to run at 2933MHz) and 3200MHz and maybe faster can and does work with Ryzen and running 2 sticks of fast DDR4 with Ryzen is quite common.

If the BIOS says 3000MHz then it should be working fine. The RAM frequency with Ryzen seems to get reported a bit differently by various different software.

 

[pcsa]

My PCS system has 16GB 3200 and I have not messed with the bios. This is what cpuz reports - lol - no real idea what it means.



How do you get image of the bios ?

 

[Oussebon]

Have a USB pen plugged in and press the requisite button - Print Screen, F12 or whtever.

CPUZ is reporting 2133MHz which is the base speed of the RAM. As long as the right number shows in your BIOS you're fine.

 

[[email protected]]

OK thanks for comments, I think I'm good, I've used CPU-Z and checked my ram, validated it here: https://valid.x86.fr/ymq1mw

Also provided a screen capture to support it, the key seemed to be updating the bios to v3803 as it released the right DOCP RAM settings to allow me to select 3000MHz.



Let me know if you think I've missed something obvious.

Lee