I recently built a new PC and have questions regarding my RAM setup. I'm dual booting Windows 11 and Nobara (Fedora Linux) with Linux being my main system. Everything seems to be working fine overall, but I noticed something odd about my RAM. I bought 64GB of ADATA XPG 6000MHz DDR5, yet in my system info, the RAM is showing as 4000 MT/s. I know about the terminology, including megatransfers per second and how doubling the clock speed works. It makes me wonder, shouldn't the MT/s be around 12,000 if the RAM is advertised as 6000 MHz? Is this just the standard speed it's set to, and could it be underclocked in the BIOS? I attempted to set it to 6000 MHz like it states on the packaging, but it failed the overclock trials. I'd really appreciate clarity on what the specs should be versus what I'm seeing. As an IT guy, I'm somewhat familiar with this, but I'm really not an expert when it comes to pushing RAM speeds, especially since my BIOS is quite complex and I don't want to mess anything up if I don't fully understand what it does.
3 Answers
To unlock the full 6000MHz, you'll need to enable an overclock profile in your BIOS. It's usually called XMP (Extreme Memory Profile). If you turn it on and it doesn't boot, there might be other issues at play, like compatibility.
The performance you can achieve depends on your motherboard and CPU capabilities. For instance, I have 96GB of 7000MHz DDR5, but even with that setup, I can only reliably get about 4800MHz when all slots are used. To hit the max speed, you might need to run fewer sticks.
That makes sense! I should consider CPU limitations, as I'm running an i9-14900KF, but can't recall my motherboard model. So, splitting across multiple channels could limit what I can achieve.
Are you using 2x32GB or 4x16GB? Generally, 4x16 is trickier to stabilize at higher speeds. Remember to enable XMP in the BIOS; it might take a couple of tries to find a stable configuration.
I have 4x16GB. I did enable XMP, but it failed on boot, showing a long black screen before prompting me to try again or load a last known good configuration.
I tried enabling XMP, but it caused a boot failure.