A story about a Ryzen 3600X paired with four RAM sticks
A story about a Ryzen 3600X paired with four RAM sticks
So, bit of a tale. My old motherboard died (Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite) of unknown causes (power cycling unrecoverable with crash free bios). I replaced the board with an X570S Aorus Elite AX motherboard. Everything went fine until I realized I did not have my ram set to their XMP profiles. At default speeds (2133) my ram was fine. No issues. XMP profiles enabled? BSODs and all kinds of erractic behavior. Chrome tabs just crashing randomly, discord crashing and resetting. strange lag, etc. running a memtest I was able to confirm I had at least possibly bad ram. After testing each stick individually, then confirming my changing slots I was able confirmed at least 1 stick was bad but only at 3200MHz (XMP profile). After ordering and replacing the bad stick I still had issues. System was still unstable and would sometimes still throw errors in ram tests. After a lot of digging I figured out the issue was related to my processor's memory controller and the number of sticks I have. LOTS of messing around I found that setting the XMP profile, turning on High Frequency Support to Level 1 and setting SoC voltage to 1.1v fix my stability issues finally. Note, I never had these issues before I changed my motherboard. Take this as a tale of learning.
Have you experimented with various voltage settings for your SoC? It's often suggested to keep it as low as feasible—under 1.1 volts is considered optimal for Ryzen processors since they tend to be quite sensitive over time. Reducing even a fraction of a volt can improve stability.
It heavily relies on CPU performance, with most devices performing optimally between 1.1V and 1.2V (my 5900X achieves best memory OC at 1.175V). I haven't come across any that excel around 1.05V, though it's not impossible. Likely the older boards adjusted the SOC voltage slightly closer to the chip's ideal range compared to newer models (I'm aware my X570 Master sets 1.2V by default, while other boards tend toward the 1V range).