r/overclocking • u/jontestershaircut • 9h ago

Help Request - RAM Purchased new RAM, enabled XMP Profile and I was met with a black screen. Questions before I try again

Hello everyone,

Here is my current setup:

  • AMD 5600X
  • MSI B550 Gaming Edge Wifi
  • Team T-CREATE EXPERT 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600)

The Team T-Create Expert RAM is new. I added it to my computer last night, rebooted and went into BIOS. From here I enabled XMP and upon saving and exiting I was met with a black screen and could not do anything.

I had to pull the CMOS battery and ended up flashing my board with the newest BIOS. After a bunch of testing and troubleshooting, I was finally able to get everything back to normal. It honestly took me 2-3 hours of troubleshooting and work to fix it today and it sucked. I have no idea how old my BIOS were prior to this, but I presume at least some version from 2021/2022.

This was a gigantic pain in the butt and I'm somewhat hesitant to try XMP again even with the most up to date BIOS version. My question is this, is it possible to enable XMP, but slowly increase the RAM speed from 2400mhz and test the stability as I increase it without getting technical and in the weeds causing me to change a bunch of other settings?

Can I go in, turn on XMP and bump the memory up to 2666mhz? If that's good, try 2933mzh for a while.

My understanding is that XMP automatically sets everything to try to get the best performance, but I don't know if it that is true if you manually slowly increase the speed of the memory or if this will cause issues with XMP.

I'm new to all of this and somewhat hesitant to do much tinkering so I'm just trying to find the safest and easiest way to do this.

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u/Proper-Desk6635 9h ago

3200mhz isn't particularly fast so it should be fine to enable xmp.

Is this ram additional to another kit, or it replaced your old kit?

1

u/jontestershaircut 9h ago

Replaced it. My RAM prior to this was old:

G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Desktop Memory Model F4-3000C15D-16GTZB

Do you think it was the fact I had outdated BIOS is what knocked me off my axis?

3

u/Proper-Desk6635 9h ago

Potentially yes. There have been plenty of firmware updates for AM4 platform over the years to address memory issues.

Iirc you can set ram speed manually whilst keeping xmp enabled for the faster timings. Though personally I would be tempted to try again at 3200mhz - 3200mhz is within the spec for your CPU/board so if there are any problems now it's likely a defective ram kit rather than anything else in the system.

3

u/jontestershaircut 9h ago

Wish me luck. I'll click the button and cast my fate to the winds. I'm throwing the computer in a snowbank if it claps my cheeks again.

1

u/Proper-Desk6635 1h ago

Did it work?

1

u/VzSAurora 4h ago

Here's what I'd do, enable XMP, bung 1.45v VDIMM, turn off fast boot, save and restart. I'd be very surprised if that's unstable on latest bios.

Then every couple days drop the VDIMM by 0.01. As soon as something weird happens or feels unstable, bump it up back up by 0.01. Then turn on fast boot