Question Memory advice for 5900X

[WelshBloke]

So I'm upgrading my PC a bit, staying with same Asus X470 prime pro motherboard.
I have two sticks of 16gb 3200 CL14 gskill ram and I'd like to bump up my memory to 64gb total just for running VMs.
My problem is that 3200 CL14 ram seems rare as hens teeth or as expensive as it was when first released.

The way I see it I can stay with the 32 GB of 3200 CL14 ram, get two more sticks of ram of different speeds and run all of them at the slower speeds (that would work?), or start over and get 4 sticks of matched ram (which would probably be 3600 CL18 from what I can see).
Is there an advantage of running 3600 ram over 3200? I've seen posts about matching the speed of the infinity fabric.
3200 CL14 is technically about the same speed as 3600 CL16.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The likelyhood of you running 3600 CAS14 RAM, in dual-channel, with TWO sticks is pretty good. With FOUR sticks, you will likely have to down-grade SOME aspect of the memory. Either 3600->3200, or CAS14->CAS16-18. Or both.

Wait, you have 3200 CAS14, and not 3600 CA14? Or you certain it's B-die and not Hynix or Micron?

You could probably get by with 3200 CAS14-16 x4 sticks.

 

[WelshBloke]

Larry have you any opinion on the 3600 over 3200 to be in sync with the infinity fabric thing? Or is that not a thing?

I have a feeling that I'm over thinking this and none of it will make a massive difference!

 

[WelshBloke]

DP!

 

[WelshBloke]

The likelyhood of you running 3600 CAS14 RAM, in dual-channel, with TWO sticks is pretty good. With FOUR sticks, you will likely have to down-grade SOME aspect of the memory. Either 3600->3200, or CAS14->CAS16-18. Or both.

Wait, you have 3200 CAS14, and not 3600 CA14? Or you certain it's B-die and not Hynix or Micron?

You could probably get by with 3200 CAS14-16 x4 sticks.

I have 3200 cas14, pretty sure it's B die as well. I might have found an identical set on eBay, I'll see if the guy is open to an offer.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Larry have you any opinion on the 3600 over 3200 to be in sync with the infinity fabric thing? Or is that not a thing?

It's nice, but not IMHO necessary. I was running 4x8GB 3600 CAS16 Trident RGB (Hynix?) on my Ryzen 3600, but then I upgraded the RAM to 4x16 3200 CAS16, and upgraded the CPU to a 5900X. I'm suffering from a blown AIO right now, so I can't really crank it up much. Have an air-cooler replacement, just have to put effort into replacing it.

I much prefer the stability of 4x3200 than the performance but occasional crash of 4x3600.

 

[WelshBloke]

YAY! 4x16GB 3200 running at cas14!

 

[Shmee]

You could probably get that running at 3600, maybe not CL14, but probably close. Might need to up your DDR4 voltage though, up to around 1.45V should be fine for B die, no problem.

I don't think you need to worry too much about the increase in FCLK from 1600 to 1800, since you have a 5900X. Most IODs on Zen 3 CPUs are more mature than the ones on the Ryzen 3600 like Larry has, and should do up to 1800 to 1900 FCLK without too much trouble.

Anyway, you will just need to try some fiddling with your EFI settings, and then do some memtesting!

 

[WelshBloke]

You could probably get that running at 3600, maybe not CL14, but probably close. Might need to up your DDR4 voltage though, up to around 1.45V should be fine for B die, no problem.

I don't think you need to worry too much about the increase in FCLK from 1600 to 1800, since you have a 5900X. Most IODs on Zen 3 CPUs are more mature than the ones on the Ryzen 3600 like Larry has, and should do up to 1800 to 1900 FCLK without too much trouble.

Anyway, you will just need to try some fiddling with your EFI settings, and then do some memtesting!

Ended up getting a 5800x3d in the end. There was a bit of a mix up with the 5900x order.

I was going to fiddle a bit with the DDR timings as I had to dial them in by hand as (I guess) the XML settings are slightly different for both sets and it won't boot with that set but it's fine if those settings are set in the bios.

 

[WelshBloke]

You could probably get that running at 3600, maybe not CL14, but probably close. Might need to up your DDR4 voltage though, up to around 1.45V should be fine for B die, no problem.

I don't think you need to worry too much about the increase in FCLK from 1600 to 1800, since you have a 5900X. Most IODs on Zen 3 CPUs are more mature than the ones on the Ryzen 3600 like Larry has, and should do up to 1800 to 1900 FCLK without too much trouble.

Anyway, you will just need to try some fiddling with your EFI settings, and then do some memtesting!

So I endend up getting it to run at 1800 but at looser timings. AIDA memory bench says that this is faster but I thought that 1600cl14 was pretty much the same as 1800cl16. Not sure its worth jumping down the rabbit hole of memmoruy tweaking to the exteme! I'm prety certain that I could tighten up those timings a bit but I'm not sure I can face the reinstalling windows because I corupted it by messing up the memory too much!

I mean its going to happen, I'm just being sensible whilst sober!