A question about memory

[Derek Smith]

Whey is 2400mhz memory more or less the same cost as 3200?

Confused of Brighton.

[eps]

It's probably the same stuff, but the 3200MHz has been certified as being able to run at that speed whereas 2400 has only been tested up to that speed.

The bits that cost the money are the RAM chips themselves, they're more or less the same silicon.

[buggalugs]

Quantities, demand

[Derek Smith]

Thanks for that.

I've been reading up on memory and, unless I've misunderstood the explanations, which is quite probable, the 3200 will run at a higher temperature than the 2400. I'll have to alter the BIOS to sort of overclock the 3200 RAM. It seems likely that, from time to time, I'll be putting the RAM to the whip, and I'm worried that the motherboard, a B550M Plus, might be compromised. Would an extra fan onto the RAM help? Or would it disrupt the airflow over the chip's heatsink?

[DuncsGTi]

Derek Smith said:

Thanks for that.

I've been reading up on memory and, unless I've misunderstood the explanations, which is quite probable, the 3200 will run at a higher temperature than the 2400. I'll have to alter the BIOS to sort of overclock the 3200 RAM. It seems likely that, from time to time, I'll be putting the RAM to the whip, and I'm worried that the motherboard, a B550M Plus, might be compromised. Would an extra fan onto the RAM help? Or would it disrupt the airflow over the chip's heatsink?

You just turn on XMP in bios when you fit the ram and it sorts the speed out for you. Ryzen processors seem to work well with fast memory.

I've been running my ram at 3600Mhz on a b450 and never had any issues with temps

[vladcjelli]

We bought 3200 ram and plonked it in our new build pc, but it shows up as running at 2666. This is a b450 max motherboard and a ryzen something or other with the built in gpu.

What is this magic XMP of which you speak? Or is there something else we should have done?

[FourWheelDrift]

vladcjelli said:

We bought 3200 ram and plonked it in our new build pc, but it shows up as running at 2666. This is a b450 max motherboard and a ryzen something or other with the built in gpu.

What is this magic XMP of which you speak? Or is there something else we should have done?

When your PC starts up hit the DEL or F2 button to enter BIOS. What you need to do is select the memory profile for 3200 that is already set on the RAM modules.

Depending on who's motherboard you have you might have to go into an advanced menu, but look for any section that mentions overclocking. Memory profile, drop down option, 3200mhz (or XMP or Profile 1) you will notice the RAM speed change on the screen.

Save and quit, done.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Tuesday 8th September 23:19

[Chozza]

Depending on the board .. you might need to update the BIOS

also how many slots of memory can come into play you might find 4 slots will limit you to 2933 , which i think is the default speed of some Ryzen series .. but google it :-)

[xeny]

Derek Smith said:

Thanks for that.

I've been reading up on memory and, unless I've misunderstood the explanations, which is quite probable, the 3200 will run at a higher temperature than the 2400. I'll have to alter the BIOS to sort of overclock the 3200 RAM. It seems likely that, from time to time, I'll be putting the RAM to the whip, and I'm worried that the motherboard, a B550M Plus, might be compromised. Would an extra fan onto the RAM help? Or would it disrupt the airflow over the chip's heatsink?

As a rule of thumb, Crucial says each 8GB of RAM uses about 3W, so unless you've gone crazy on memory quantities, the heat from the memory is negligible compared to the CPU's output.

Generally the waft from the CPU fan and any case fans does the trick nicely.

What kind of compromised is concerning you?

[Mr.Jimbo]

The other thing to check is CAS Latency timing, you may well find that the 2400 runs at lower (tighter) CAS latency than the 3200Mhz.

It's a complicated topic, but basically you want the best combination of Speed (MHz) plus lowest CAS timings that you can afford, and in some instances, you see sets of RAM advertised as high speed (MHz) but really crap latency, meaning that a lower speed but lower latency set would benchmark better.

In reality, you're not going to notice a big difference, day to day, and if you're really keen, you can get into manual CAS settings in the BIOS, but that is a whole load more overclocking than just setting a RAM speed and testing, there are something like 80 or 100 CAS timing settings in some BIOSes.

I did once knock up a spreadsheet showing the effective overall speed of RAM as a function of both speed in MHz and latency in Ms, leading to the best combination of my RAM kit I had installed but can't for the life of me find it, would far more easily explain what I've written above I think.

Finally there are manufacturers of memory chips that overclock (subjectively) better than others. Samsung B die is the favoured set, usually tighter timings at higher speeds, rather than (iirc) Micron?

[Derek Smith]

xeny said:

Derek Smith said:

Thanks for that.

I've been reading up on memory and, unless I've misunderstood the explanations, which is quite probable, the 3200 will run at a higher temperature than the 2400. I'll have to alter the BIOS to sort of overclock the 3200 RAM. It seems likely that, from time to time, I'll be putting the RAM to the whip, and I'm worried that the motherboard, a B550M Plus, might be compromised. Would an extra fan onto the RAM help? Or would it disrupt the airflow over the chip's heatsink?

As a rule of thumb, Crucial says each 8GB of RAM uses about 3W, so unless you've gone crazy on memory quantities, the heat from the memory is negligible compared to the CPU's output.

Generally the waft from the CPU fan and any case fans does the trick nicely.

What kind of compromised is concerning you?

I'm going for a Ryzen 9 with 64gb RAM. I use Blender a lot and this sucks memory even when you instruct it to also use the GPU. With a Ryzen 3, the fans kick in every now an again, so I assume the demand is stretching it a bit. I am concerned about heat. From what I gather, the demand will not be lower on the 9, it will just do things, such as render, a bit faster, and perhaps - hopefully - not freeze.

[Derek Smith]

Mr.Jimbo said:

The other thing to check is CAS Latency timing, you may well find that the 2400 runs at lower (tighter) CAS latency than the 3200Mhz.

It's a complicated topic, but basically you want the best combination of Speed (MHz) plus lowest CAS timings that you can afford, and in some instances, you see sets of RAM advertised as high speed (MHz) but really crap latency, meaning that a lower speed but lower latency set would benchmark better.

In reality, you're not going to notice a big difference, day to day, and if you're really keen, you can get into manual CAS settings in the BIOS, but that is a whole load more overclocking than just setting a RAM speed and testing, there are something like 80 or 100 CAS timing settings in some BIOSes.

I did once knock up a spreadsheet showing the effective overall speed of RAM as a function of both speed in MHz and latency in Ms, leading to the best combination of my RAM kit I had installed but can't for the life of me find it, would far more easily explain what I've written above I think.

Finally there are manufacturers of memory chips that overclock (subjectively) better than others. Samsung B die is the favoured set, usually tighter timings at higher speeds, rather than (iirc) Micron?

Thanks for that.

I'm reluctant to overclock. Back in the day, two friends roasted their CPUs and motherboard. I don't play games so have normally gone for entry level CPUs, but modern video editing programmes, vector graphics and especially 3D graphics software show the limitations. When the GPU fans come on I get nervous.

[Monty Python]

Derek Smith said:

Thanks for that.

I'm reluctant to overclock. Back in the day, two friends roasted their CPUs and motherboard. I don't play games so have normally gone for entry level CPUs, but modern video editing programmes, vector graphics and especially 3D graphics software show the limitations. When the GPU fans come on I get nervous.

You shouldn't be - all current CPUs and GPU have built-in thermal protection - if they get too hot then they simply drop the clock speed to keep the temperature below their maximum. Failing that, they'll simply force the system to shut down.

[Mr.Jimbo]

Yes I think for your use case, overclocking would probably be low on the list of priorities - regardless of temperature you'll want max stability, so avoid anything to do with timings, and maybe look at speed - but if you want to avoid the risk of crashing during a long render, you should probably set the rated speed in BIOS (XMP or the AMD equivalent) and leave it at that.

I don't think you quite need to go into the realms of error checking memory, as that is both server grade and thus significantly more pricey.

I can't say I do much rendering, but you may find a tighter CAS set of RAM speeds up your render times, however I expect the speed would have a greater effect. I've got 32GB of fairly lax timed 3600MHz GSkill Trident Ram and for gaming and light workstation (CAD) loads it's been absolutely fine.

[eps]

Derek Smith said:

xeny said:

Derek Smith said:

Thanks for that.

I've been reading up on memory and, unless I've misunderstood the explanations, which is quite probable, the 3200 will run at a higher temperature than the 2400. I'll have to alter the BIOS to sort of overclock the 3200 RAM. It seems likely that, from time to time, I'll be putting the RAM to the whip, and I'm worried that the motherboard, a B550M Plus, might be compromised. Would an extra fan onto the RAM help? Or would it disrupt the airflow over the chip's heatsink?

As a rule of thumb, Crucial says each 8GB of RAM uses about 3W, so unless you've gone crazy on memory quantities, the heat from the memory is negligible compared to the CPU's output.

Generally the waft from the CPU fan and any case fans does the trick nicely.

What kind of compromised is concerning you?

I'm going for a Ryzen 9 with 64gb RAM. I use Blender a lot and this sucks memory even when you instruct it to also use the GPU. With a Ryzen 3, the fans kick in every now an again, so I assume the demand is stretching it a bit. I am concerned about heat. From what I gather, the demand will not be lower on the 9, it will just do things, such as render, a bit faster, and perhaps - hopefully - not freeze.

Ah right - so..

Ryzen 9 (but how many cores?)

With 64GB RAM sounds like overkill here, but you'll know your use better than we will.

OS? and more importantly will the OS support 64GB RAM

HDD + SSD?

video card? with how much memory? <== surely this bit is the important bit here, for what you intend to use it for??

Of course most systems are only as quick as the slowest part and possibly any interfacing elements such as comms between CPU and memory or other IO.

[Beati Dogu]

Even Windows 10 Home (64-Bit) supports up to 128Gb of memory.

Windows 10 Pro (64-Bit) supports up to 2Tb and other versions up to 6Tb.

[Derek Smith]

Mr.Jimbo said:

Yes I think for your use case, overclocking would probably be low on the list of priorities - regardless of temperature you'll want max stability, so avoid anything to do with timings, and maybe look at speed - but if you want to avoid the risk of crashing during a long render, you should probably set the rated speed in BIOS (XMP or the AMD equivalent) and leave it at that.

I don't think you quite need to go into the realms of error checking memory, as that is both server grade and thus significantly more pricey.

I can't say I do much rendering, but you may find a tighter CAS set of RAM speeds up your render times, however I expect the speed would have a greater effect. I've got 32GB of fairly lax timed 3600MHz GSkill Trident Ram and for gaming and light workstation (CAD) loads it's been absolutely fine.

Indeed. I've had a few issues with my machine shutting down, presumably due to heat, when rendering. Never on video editing, despite some render times going into hours, but Blender seems to be touchy on that aspect. The solution is to limit the number of vertices, and as I'm in the early learning phase, it's easy enough to limit them. But, of course, it's limiting. The forums suggest it's down to a my CPU so I thought I'd bring my biannual upgrade forward a few months.

I was going for a RAID backup as, obviously, images, video and 3D hit the HDDs hard. I've opted for my current computer to be networked and used as backup. A bit of overkill, but it's a spare as well. The Ryzen 3 has inbuilt graphics so I can rescue the GPU.

[xeny]

Derek Smith said:

Indeed. I've had a few issues with my machine shutting down, presumably due to heat, when rendering.

In my experience those shutdowns are at least as often due to the PSU not quite coping rather than the CPU overheating. The "sensors" section of HWinfo can give you CPU temperature if you want to keep a check on it.

[Derek Smith]

Off topic, ironically my own, 3D is massive fun, but a steepish learning curve. I thought I'd give it a go during lockdown just as something to do, but it's become almost an obsession. It's fabulous fun. Sculpting is playing with Plasticine, and animation of models can be tremendously engrossing. Video editing, with keyframes, gives a bit of an insight, but even so, it occupies the brain.

And Blender is free, yet it has been used in general release films.