RAM speed on a laptop refers to how quickly it processes data.
RAM speed on a laptop refers to how quickly it processes data.
Hi all, this may sound silly, but I'm new to the laptop world so any info is helpful. Recently I got a "gaming" laptop Aorus 15x AKF. It's not actually fo gaming, it's just that I need good I/O, expandable/swappable storage/RAM and quite powerful hardware fo my work. Since RAM is cheap now, I went with 16GB option to upgrade it myself and save money. So, I have 13900HX CPU that supports up to 128GB DDR5-5600, laptop specs says it supports up to 64GB-5600. RAM that came with the laptop was 5600 CL46 and it was running that way. So I ordered 2 sticks of 32GB RAM - this one KF556S40IB-32, 5600 CL40 (why 64GB? because the price was not that high and I just thought let's get the maximum supported thing and forget about it). It worked fine after installation, but defaulted to 5200 CL38. I googled around, tried BIOS/Gigabyte sowtware updates, nothing. Asked their support people and was informed that this is because XMP is not supported on this laptop's mobo so 5600 CL40 profile won't run. Makes sense (even though it is not mentioned on the product page), so I asked them what if I get the most normal JEDEC 5600 CL46, and they confirmed that this will work. Couple weeks later (had to wait for shipping), returned the first RAM and got 2 sticks of KVR56S46BD8-32, 5600 CL46. The spec sheet says "The SPD is programmed to JEDEC standard latency DDR5-5600 timing of 46-45-45 at 1.1V" and even the compatibility tool on Kingston website showed this as compatible for my laptop model. Slot it in, boot up and see 5200 CL42. In the laptop BIOS, the memory tab is pretty much information page, no settings are available at all, so I'm pretty much limited to chaning the RAM itself and updating BIOS version. Asked them again and got some weird reply that laptop automaticfally selected this based on the RAM size. I know about multichannel, speed, timings, ranks, but I've never heard about size affecting the RAM profile, and I couldn't find stuff confirming this online, is this a real thing? I know that technically, latency of 5200CL42 is lower than 5600CL46, but why would it default to 5600CL46 with the base 16GB kit then. Has anybody faced similar thing? If that's actually true, would it work at top profile with 32GB? Sorry for the long read and thanks in advance, any answers or suggestions will be appreciated.
The latency gap would be just 0.27ns, isn't it worth sacrificing this for the extra 400MT/s? Still, it doesn’t clarify why firmware chooses various profiles for RAM kits that differ only in size—they’re even identical SK Hynix NAND models.
They've remained unusually quiet when I inquired about how their firmware chooses profiles based solely on size.