RAM Upgrade

[PaulDY]

When I purchased my PC way back in November 2018 it was listed as having the following RAM:

16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2x 8GB)

I am now looking to upgrade to at least 32GB of RAM so started looking into the type of RAM I have in the PC and what would be the best to use. I know very little about PC's as you can probablly tell from this email but I just wanted to check and make sure I get the right sticks, so on following a few guides on the internet I ended up finding the following information:

Performance tab on Task manager shows that the PC is installed with 2x 8GB DIMM RAM @ 2133MHz not 3000MHz, so I don't think what was installed is what I paid for, but I appreciate therer is nothing to be done about that as the computer is so old.

In addition to looking at the Task Manager I also downloaded and ran CPU-Z, this confirmed that I have 16GB of DDR4 RAM installed (So assume DIMM is same as DDR4???) but in addition the timings for the memory in CPU-Z shows a DRAM Frequency of just 1069.3MHz.

Am I right in thinking that the RAM sticks in the PC are a lower spec than ordered and in addition they are under performing i.e 3000MHz ordered > 2133MHz installed > 1069MHz actual speed???

Am I better to scrap the existing sticks and buy 2x 16GB or 4x 8GB new and if so what spec of RAM is it that I need to install? I assume the higher the speed the better the performance, I read that if you add higher speed sticks to the existing, they will only operate at the lower speed so am totally confused?

Any help/guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[radhumble]

Other users might be able to correct me if I'm wrong; but 2133Mhz is the default speed for DDR4 RAM; to use the RAM at 3000Mhz you need to enter your BIOS and change the XMP profile (usually called profile 1 or something like that) and it should change your RAM speed to the advertised speed!

It's fairly straightforward and not too techy; there are plenty of youtube videos on doing it across a number of different BIOS interfaces

Edit: Also your DRAM frequency is showing as 1069.3 MHz as it is half of what you're currently running at (2133Mhz)! DDR stands for Double Data Rate so to get the initial speed by halving your current speed; which is what CPU-Z is doing. So when you change the XMP profile you should see it come to 1500Mhz.

 

[PaulDY]

Thanks for the replys, and the link to the other thread, I've gone into the BIOS and in the Ai Overclock Tuner I've got 4 options

Auto (current selection)
Manual
XPM I
XPM II

When I select either of the XPM options it shows up the DDR4 3000 RAM, does it matter which of the XPM options I use?

Also how much difference will I see from installing 2 more 8GB 3000MHz sticks or scrapping the current RAM and upgrading to 32GB of say 4000MHz?

 

[PaulDY]

Thanks again for your reply Nursemorph, have set the BIOS to XPM I and ram is showing as 3000MHz, so that's sorted.

With regards to the upgrade, having checked a few youtube vlogs I've decided to stick with the 3000MHz sticks as cost vs reward seems to be limited when upgradding to more than 3200/3600.

Thanks again.