Motherboard Asus X370-I vs. Asus B350-I and selecting 3200 MHz RAM

SilverFox18

Trash Compacter
Original poster
Sep 29, 2017
41
47
Gradually pulling together components - decided to go Ryzen… Asus brought out their mobo and like most here on SFFF struggled to see the advantage of X370 over B350 (except I hear that perhaps the X370 has a little more flexibility in terms of RAM compatibility?).

I have gone with B350 - and contacted G.Skill to double-check on RAM to run at 3200 MHz (supposed 'sweet spot')… they came back with some really conservative speed of RAM - only 2400 MHz and directed me to their QVL
http://gskill.com/en/configurator?manu=29&chip=2952&model=3208

More than a little surprised/disappointed especially after G.Skill's recent launches of high-speed 'Ryzen' memory. Are they being ultra conservative or just a bit out-of-date?

Anybody on SFFF had any luck with Trident Z 2 x8 Gb @ 3200 Mhz on B350-I ?
Thanks in advance for advice
 

theGryphon

Airflow Optimizer
Jun 15, 2015
299
237
Which sticks are those exactly?

B350 is more than capable to run the DIMMs at 3200MHz as long as it's in their XMP profile. Heck, I'm overclocking my 3200MHz Cas14 FlareX's to 3466MHz Cas14 on an Asrock AB350 ITX...
 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,827
4,902
Which sticks are those exactly?

B350 is more than capable to run the DIMMs at 3200MHz as long as it's in their XMP profile. Heck, I'm overclocking my 3200MHz Cas14 FlareX's to 3466MHz Cas14 on an Asrock AB350 ITX...
Mind you, DDR4-3200 and higher is only possible on RAM modules that are using Samsung's B-die chips. I've read only a few (out of hundreds) of users that managed DDR4-3200 with SK-Hynix chips. One can often spot these as they generally have CAS latencies of 14ns for DDR4-3200 spec and up, while SK-Hynix' current chips sit at 16ns or above.

The FlareX set you have happens to be using those Samsung B-dies, but my Corsair Vengeance LPX CMK16GX4M2B3200C16 doesn't even run stably at DDR4-3066 spec on either my ASRock AB350-ITX/ac or Asus Prime X370-Pro. Chipset doesn't really matter it seems what overclock you can achieve on the memory, BIOS and CPU do.

Also from another topic:

I've been folllowing Ryzen RAM overclocking since it was clear it was going to be more involved than with current Intel solutions and I found this to be a very complex area. You see the most extreme examples of people not getting over DDR4-2133 and other people just having to increase the voltage a little to get DDR4-3466 stable.

A few niggles:
- "DDR4-3200" is a rating/spec measured at 'million transfers per second', so MegaTransfers/sec or MT/s. It is not MHz, DDR4-3200 runs at 1600MHz. DDR RAM does two transfers per clock tick.
- a certain RAM speed and/or latency can be achieved by manual primary and secondary timings, but also some more specific settings like Geardown Mode or ProcODT (more info).
- it is overclocking, so performance achieved depends on the CPU, memory, chipset and firmware (BIOS).
- just running CineBench doesn't cut it for memory stability. If it can't survive something like a full 3DMark or SysMark run, it's not stable IMO.
- RAM instability 'on the edge' of stability is hard to detect and can creep on you for a while. If left unresolved it might corrupt stored data.
 

SilverFox18

Trash Compacter
Original poster
Sep 29, 2017
41
47
Mind you, DDR4-3200 and higher is only possible on RAM modules that are using Samsung's B-die chips. I've read only a few (out of hundreds) of users that managed DDR4-3200 with SK-Hynix chips. One can often spot these as they generally have CAS latencies of 14ns for DDR4-3200 spec and up, while SK-Hynix' current chips sit at 16ns or above.

The FlareX set you have happens to be using those Samsung B-dies, but my Corsair Vengeance LPX CMK16GX4M2B3200C16 doesn't even run stably at DDR4-3066 spec.

Also from another topic:
Thanks Phuncz - more to think about ;) - so many 'moving parts' o_O
 

Choidebu

"Banned"
Aug 16, 2017
1,196
1,204
Interesting take abt the cinebench vs sysmark or 3dmark, gotta check it out. I have B350-i and a PC3000 2x8 kit (none of that samsung b-die g-skill stuff), and asus's D.O.C.P setting puts them to 1490 Mhz (PC2933). I then tried 3000, and now it shows 1520 Mhz, still stable at cinebench.

CMIIW, but I think the platform kinda stabilizes for now and unless you go for the ultimate benchmark to squeeze all thise extra performance the BIOSes has matured for most ram kits.