I am building another pc but im having issues I’ve never had before.
Build sheet: gigabyte x870e aorus elite wifi7, 9950x3d, 128gb 6000 expo (2 sticks) ram, 1tb windows m.2, 4tb storage m.2, gigabyte oc 5090, evga 3090.
The issue: every time I turn on expo it will not boot at all.
6000 MT/s can be somewhat taxing on some boards, it is a out-of-warranty* overclock after all.
And some 6000 MT/s kits sold can’t really run at those advertised speeds and CAS Latency stable (looking at you, Corsair).
The officially rated max in-warranty memory speed that your board and processor support is DDR5-5600:
See here (under connectivity):
https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/desktops/ryzen/9000-series/amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d.html
Ensure you’re running the latest stable (no beta) UEFI update available for your motherboard, those updates ship with AGESA updates for better memory compatibility.
And enable Memory Context Restore in the UEFI for faster boot times, so it does not retrain on every boot (should be enabled by default).
Given your processor is a X3D, there’s little perceivable gain between 5600 MT/s and 6000 MT/s.
I’d recommend setting it to 5600 MT/s with a CL (CAS Latency) of CL 36 and calling it a day, should boot without issue after that. Give it some time for memory training on first boot (takes ~20 minutes max).
If you’re really dead set on sacrificing warranty for a 2%-4% imperceptible gain; then try re-seating the RAM (ensure no single speck of dust is anywhere near the traces), research the specific RAM cell types (“dies”) and the potential it has (Buildzoid/Actually Hardcore Overclocking on YouTube has good info on this) with very specific DDR5 parameters. If it’s a cheap Corsair DRAM kit, yeah, that’s not gonna be stable in the optimal scenarios. Samsung/Hynix dies, maybe.
Little compatibility matrix (assuming “cheap” Corsair DRAM kit with
“bad” memory cells/dies):
| Memory speed | CAS Latency | Will it boot? | In-warranty? | Long-term stability? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DDR5-6000 | CL 26 | Probably not | No | No |
| DDR5-6000 | CL 28 | Probably not | No | No |
| DDR5-6000 | CL 30 | Maybe? | No | No |
| DDR5-6000 | CL 36 | It should. | No | Maybe? |
| DDR5-6000 | CL 40 | Yes | No | Yes |
| DDR5-5600 | CL 26 | Probably not | Yes | No |
| DDR5-5600 | CL 28 | Maybe? | Yes | No |
| DDR5-5600 | CL 30 | It should. | Yes | Maybe? |
| DDR5-5600 | CL 36 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| DDR5-5600 | CL 40 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
out-of-warranty info:
Lower your RAM EXPO frequency a little, loosen timings, and bump the memory voltage slightly to fix boot failures on your X870 board.
and bump the memory voltage slightly
Yeah don’t do that, unless you like burning/exploding X3D CPUs. Not worth the potential risk and trouble, for imperceptible gain in FPS. Lower CL (CAS Latency) instead. See matrix and explainer above.
