Strange RAM issue........or is it ????

[Seanie's Show]

This one has got me completely baffled, I have a Ryzen R7 1700 overclocked to 3.9ghz fully stable on a Gigabyte AB350m Gaming 3 motherboard, with 16gb (2x8gb) DDR4 G.Skill Trident Z RGB 3000mhz ram.

Originally I was on F2 bios, but couldn't get my ram to run at full speed, 2133mhz was top, so I contacted Gigabyte who sent me a newer F3 bios, flashed it, everything working fine, but still couldn't get ram to run at full speed, so I flashed back to F2 and told Gigabyte of my outcome, anyway, after fighting with the F2 bios, I managed to get ram upto 2666mhz stable, better than nothing, all through these flashes I can clearly see XMP option is available, however Gigabyte then sent me a newer F3 revised bios, which I tried out.

now on to the confusing part, so please bear with me, I noticed shortly after flashing this newer F3 bios that the XMP profile option was no longer available in the bios, so instantly thought it was the bios at fault as it was beta, so flashed back to F2, still no XMP available, so I contacted Gigabyte, and they gave me a few options to try, 1st, power off, put 1 stick in slot 2 only and boot to the bios, this stick showed XMP profile, now power down, take that stick out and put the other in slot 2, boot to the bios, this stick doesn't show XMP profile, ok so the ram is possibly faulty.

So, I RMA the ram to the computer shop I brought it from, they got it last Friday, and tested it today (Monday) no problems found, WTF, XMP working fine on both sticks, so they've put it back into stock and raised a credit for me, although I asked for it to be replaced, so today I rang them, paid a little extra and ordered the same ram, just the 3200mhz version instead, it should be here tomorrow, along with another motherboard that ive wanted all along and just brought the Gigabyte to get me by for now, the new board is the MSI B350m Mortar, which I managed to find in stock in a shop in Germany, I'm in the UK.

So, id like to hear your opinions on what the problem could be ? I know that the F3 bios updates are trying to update CPU AGENSA micro code, do you think its the bios updates ? although I went back to F2 where everything was originally fine, but not after back flashing, could it be the board itself ? or even my CPU ? mem controller, or do you think the shop is lying to me and did actually find a fault ? they didn't charge me the usual re-stocking fee, and sent me a credit instead of a replacement, they don't have the 3000mhz ram in stock at the moment, which is also why I ordered the 3200mhz ram.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance, I'm interested to hear your opinions.

[chew*]

What probably happened is newer microcode stayed in bios after the flashback.

[Seanie's Show]

that's what I'm thinking, that wont affect the cpu will it ?, I noticed when I was flashing back to F2, it was jumping through sections, like it would update to 35% then jump to 50% and then again at 85% would jump straight to 93%, kinda shows those parts are not getting updated.

I was looking for a way to force the backup bios, and threads I read which gave instructions didn't work, and also a way to fully erase the bios chip then flash a new file to it, even thought about just pulling the USB stick halfway through a flash, therefore forcing the back up bios to kick in, I may try this when my new board comes tomorrow if all goes well.

[chew*]

Try going back to first then going forward again..

It will likely cause undesireable operation..

Also flash.. Then once it boots kill power pull cmos jump clr cmos pull cpu..

My gaming 5 acted weird on a backflash once. Cleared all residual power was fine afterwards.

[sssf]

I'm looking into buying the AB350m Gaming 3 as well.
I was wondering what your memory status is currently, maybe also on the newly released F5 bios (supporting AGESA 1.0.0.6).

I'm looking into getting a nice set of memory, being either
- Corsair Vengeance LPX CMK16GX4M2B3733C17R ( I assume these contain Samsung b die chips)
- G.Skill Flare X F4-3200C14D-16GFX (officially supported as stated in their QVL: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard...10#support-doc )

I will give a virtual high 5 if anyone can tell me how these memory sticks would perform on this board.

[sssf]

I ended up buying G.Skill Flare X F4-3200C14D-16GFX because the other was not available. I can confirm that it runs on XMP speeds (3200Mhz 14CAS, etc) on F5 Bios.
I did not spend time on memory overclock yet