I’ll be honest and say I’m not familiar with the specifics, but I recall some old finicky-ness where Ryzen needed Samsung B-Die RAM in order to support high speed (3200+?) RAM kits. Maybe I don’t need to care if I’m not going to OC my RAM and just run standard 3200? I’m ramping up to do a new build (first one in 5+ years woohoo!!!) over the course of the next couple weeks, so I’d like to know.
So yeah, does Ryzen still need B-Die? If so, could somebody explain why that is? Are there any other weird things like this I’m going to want to keep in mind? I plan of getting the Ryzen 7 1700 and then using it as an opportunity to learn about overclocking while also saving a fair bit of money vs the 1700x or 1800x.
BIOS updates have greatly helped RAM compatibility, but some kits still are a bit iffy. I don’t really know why, but I guess it’s because how the chips on the RAM handles stuff? Supposedly Samsung B-die chips are “higher quality” than other dies.
It’s a little outdated, but Reddit has a list of RAM and what memory chips they use:
B-die is the best guarantee of hitting rated speeds, but I’m currently running 4x8 Hynix at 3000MHz on an Asus Prime X370 Pro. Basically it will depend but just about anything should hit 2933 now if rated to (or higher).
The best thing you can do is research on support the board you want has seen. Look out for haters, every brand has them.
I did not know this. For some reason I assumed more physical channels sticks meant easier higher speeds. Does it have to do with the complexity of handling timing on more physical pathways?
I think that is mainlly a Asrock specific bios issue.
But indeed the more slots you populate, the less likelly you will hit rated 3200mhz + speeds.
With 2 sticks decent memory sticks Samsung B-die preferablly, you sould be able to get 3200mhz.
But the Asrock bios is kinda wonky wenn it comes to memory overclocking at times.
Not every bios update has been an improvement.
There are definitelly boards that do better memory overclocking then Asrock.
But still the imc kinda sucks on Ryzen in general, so did it on Buildozer.
Tweaking memory to its finest sweetspot in terms of speeds, timings and overall stabillity is a very time consuming task.
The ASRock 4.50 BIOS is currently a complete horror show for Memory compatibility and stability aside from several other issues such as even basic UI consistency.
ASRock seems to have released it in an unfinished state as a stop gap measure to allow new Raven Ridge APU’s to work.
However its so bad that a lot of Hynix M kits will simply only run at 2133MHz with advanced RAM tweaks.
Previously on version 3.4 it was a piece of cake to get 3200MHz on a even a weird Hynix M kit of mine.
Yeah thats just Asrock’s bioses being a bit wonky at times.
But they will probablly fix it some day soon i hope.
The X370 Professional Gaming and X370 Taichi are awesome boards.
But their bios still has allot to be desired.
So a 4.60 BIOS just got released for some ASRock boards that fixes a number of the prior issues. Once again its possible to run Hynix RAM at rated speed. It requires some manual adjustments, but it works!
One also needs to avoid using odd timing values and use even numbers instead to get the best performance. Which can be a bit tricky depending on the ram.
Yeah, definitelly if you select the rated xmp profile,
then you must double check the timings.
Because the Asrock bios can make a pretty mess of that sometimes.
