Question AT Forums - I need your expertise!

[The Sauce]

I just upgraded my ram from DDR4-3000 C17 8x2 (Crucial Ballistix) to DDR4-3600 C18 16x2 Dual Rank (Corsair LPX). Was expecting a nice performance improvement but my benchmarks have plummeted. I have confirmed correct BIOS settings on my ASUS Hero 9700k OC system with CPU-Z. When I run UserBench I get "Way Below Expectations" on the performance and my Cinebench dropped by about 40%.

Any ideas what is happening here?

 

[dlerious]

Have you verified the timings in BIOS or using something like HWINFO64

 

[Billy Tallis]

It looks like you haven't actually enabled XMP speed/timings in the UEFI settings, or if you did then the system failed to POST at that speed and reverted back to JEDEC standard 2133 MT/s.

 

[CakeMonster]

The 'Memory' tab in CPU-Z is what tells you the current speeds.

 

[The Sauce]

So, you guys were right and now I’m stuck. Either it goes into a frozen boot cycle, or it eventually boots straight into windows with bad settings and no option to enter the bios. I’m not really sure what else I can do at this point other than clear the CMOS, which I’m really hoping not to do since I spent days tweaking it and don’t want to redo all that work. I tried replacing the old memory and it is doing the same thing with the old memory now.

 

[mpo]

Yeah, sounds like more is going on behind the scenes. XML is probably the most basic memory overclocking. If you can't get that profile to POST, wouldn't be surprised if other things were going on behind the scenes.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

So, you guys were right and now I’m stuck. Either it goes into a frozen boot cycle, or it eventually boots straight into windows with bad settings and no option to enter the bios. I’m not really sure what else I can do at this point other than clear the CMOS, which I’m really hoping not to do since I spent days tweaking it and don’t want to redo all that work. I tried replacing the old memory and it is doing the same thing with the old memory now.

Unfortunately it seems it hosed your overclock, but you may not need to start all over. Bump ram voltage up for starters, and set the timings and speed manually. You can save the OC profile first, since you put a bunch of time into that.

 

[The Sauce]

Thanks all a bunch for your help. Interesting conclusion to this story. I cleared the CMOS and my old memory worked again. I then upgraded to the latest UEFI (2004), which hadn't been updated in 2 years. Not only did this totally fix the memory issue (new kit working great!) but it totally crushed my overclock. I'm down from 1.375V to 1.27V and still lowering/testing. Max temps mid 70's. I'm just thrilled that this memory hosed my old BIOS and forced me to upgrade!