11 minutes ago, jaxgator said:

As you probably already saw, I ran into issues tinkering with the voltages so reset everything and then after re-applying the timings changes, did nothing with the voltages.

For some reason, I seem to have issues when disabling power down mode.  BIOS would freeze sometimes as soon as I disabled it.  When it didn't, I would get Windows infinite boot loops with the blue screen and sad face emoji.  It's currently enabled as I am afraid things will go haywire again if I enable it.

I thought about updating BIOS.  I am currently on version FA2 but can't find any information about that version anywhere.  The current version is F32b for "(rev. 1.0/1.2) rev. 1.3 rev. 1.1" X670 boards on their website but I don't know how to determine what my version is.  I guess I will leave it enabled for now.

Going to run the TestMem5 now as suggested.

Again, thanks for all of your help Sethos!

Could very well be an outdated AGESA version. No matter what, I'd just get on the latest version to be absolutely certain. I think you're on the rev 1.3 version of you board, that has FA2 listed under BIOS versions; https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X670-AORUS-ELITE-AX-rev-13/support#support-dl-bios and that's from the beginning of the year.

But it's not an absolute necessity to disable Power Down, it gives you slightly better latency. So don't fret if you can't get it working.

Hope you get an error-free run and absolutely no problem, great to see people's interest in upgrading and squeezing that little bit of extra out of their hardware 👍

2 hours ago, Sethos said:

Could very well be an outdated AGESA version. No matter what, I'd just get on the latest version to be absolutely certain. I think you're on the rev 1.3 version of you board, that has FA2 listed under BIOS versions; https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X670-AORUS-ELITE-AX-rev-13/support#support-dl-bios and that's from the beginning of the year.

But it's not an absolute necessity to disable Power Down, it gives you slightly better latency. So don't fret if you can't get it working.

Hope you get an error-free run and absolutely no problem, great to see people's interest in upgrading and squeezing that little bit of extra out of their hardware 👍

Saw your post on my phone and the memtest was only 20 minutes in so I shut it down.  Yup, you were right that I had rev 1.3 so I grabbed that latest version of BIOS and installed it.  No change.  When I tried to save and exit BIOS after changing only the memory power down mode, BIOS locked up and froze.  Just going to live with it enabled.  I don't think it would have any affect when I am using the PC, or would it?

One other question: When running the memtest, should I not be doing anything else on the PC?  You know?  Like maybe browsing the web.  I wouldn't think so but thought I'd ask anyway.

Thanks again fellow flier.

1 hour ago, jaxgator said:

Saw your post on my phone and the memtest was only 20 minutes in so I shut it down.  Yup, you were right that I had rev 1.3 so I grabbed that latest version of BIOS and installed it.  No change.  When I tried to save and exit BIOS after changing only the memory power down mode, BIOS locked up and froze.  Just going to live with it enabled.  I don't think it would have any affect when I am using the PC, or would it?

One other question: When running the memtest, should I not be doing anything else on the PC?  You know?  Like maybe browsing the web.  I wouldn't think so but thought I'd ask anyway.

Thanks again fellow flier.

It's weird that it seems to go completely haywire once you disable it, even in BIOS. Mine only acted up inside Windows but I guess it could show its face in many ways. But it's just a power saving feature that is default enabled, you won't feel a difference with it being on or off.

I mean, using your PC for light tasks isn't going to give you any errors or spoil the test once you've started to my knowledge. It will hammer your CPU, memory controller and fill your RAM, so you will definitely feel the PC being sluggish, that's about it

and anytime.

11 hours ago, Sethos said:

Oh and for everyone who is tinkering with timings and voltages, please do yourself a favor a make sure it's stable. Highly recommend you use something like TestMem5 with the Extreme or Absolut setting by anta777. The Absolut will fairly quickly expose an unstable setup. Here's the new branch by CoolCmd, as the original TestMem5 was abandoned quite some time ago;

https://github.com/CoolCmd/TestMem5/releases

Then make sure you change the test configuration, verifying it's set to either of the two mentioned above. Then run it for at least the default an hour and a half. More is always better when doing stability testing.

You will need to run it as administrator and if it throws up any message boxes complaining about admin still, restart the PC and it should stop.

Using TestMem5 downloaded from the link you provided, I can't see "Extreme" or "Absolut" settings. In fact, I can't change anything in settings. 

2 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Using TestMem5 downloaded from the link you provided, I can't see "Extreme" or "Absolut" settings. In fact, I can't change anything in settings.

Press 'Settings', then under the 'Testing' tab;

4 minutes ago, Sethos said:

Press 'Settings', then under the 'Testing' tab;

Got it! For some reason I couldn't see the other tabs 🤪

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Got it! For some reason I couldn't see the other tabs 🤪

Don't feel bad.  I couldn't either.  lol

I didn't take a screenshot but completed the test which took a little over an hour and 45 minutes without issue.  I will apply the changes mentioned by Sethos and give it another shot later.

As someone else who also just made the upgrade from 32GB to 64GB, I can confirm what others have said where the difference in 2020 is minimal. It's maybe a tad smoother, but that's all at best. This was more of a purchase to help future proof the system for 2024, but I wanted to toss in my experience for anyone else who was curious about how things perform in 2020. 

OLD: G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series (Intel XMP 3.0) DDR5 RAM (2x16GB) 6000MT/s CL36

NEW: G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series (Intel XMP 3.0) DDR5 RAM (2x32GB) 6400MT/s CL32

I have a setup similar to @Sethos but with only 32GB of RAM.

Question, was this the kit you just bought?

 

Specs:

6 hours ago, Samaritano said:

I have a setup similar to @Sethos but with only 32GB of RAM.

Question, was this the kit you just bought?

 

Specs:

That could be the kit yeah, the model / SKU number for mine was CMK64GX5M2B6000Z30. Slight variation on the one you linked, ends in C30 instead but that's probably a regional thing.

5 hours ago, Sethos said:

That could be the kit yeah, the model / SKU number for mine was CMK64GX5M2B6000Z30. Slight variation on the one you linked, ends in C30 instead but that's probably a regional thing.

Thank you. It is in fact a different kit. Here is the one you have.

Apparently, the power down mode issue I was experiencing was not some one-off case.  There are many others experiencing it as well as shown by the following Reddit thread: 

 

I had Buildzoid / 'Actually Hardcore Overclocking' look at my timings, as I was curious if there was anything worth tidying up. My timings are a copy of his but he actually had some recommendations as I was running single-rank sticks. The 4 tertiary he wrote a number next to could be tightened up just a smidge,

 

So if anyone is running single-rank sticks and copying his timings, figured I'd pass on the information.

He also talked about perhaps trying for 6200MT/s and if I had to thermal headroom, increase the tREFI but we'll see.

4 hours ago, Sethos said:

He also talked about perhaps trying for 6200MT/s

But then you would not be able to keep the primary timings? Which are very good.

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

But then you would not be able to keep the primary timings? Which are very good.

That is true, I'd probably have to back off a bit but I honestly don't know what gets you the best performance, tighter timings vs 200MT/s extra.

I did go to 6200MT/s and FCLK at 2066.7MHz and went back to tCL at 30 but that gave me an error. So I'd have to loosen the timings a bit and I'm not sure I want to go down that rabbit hole.

Now I'm playing a bit with upping the tREFI and lowering the tRFC, that'll give a nice boost on DDR5 but if not, I'm just going back to what I had and locking it down. Don't want spend this much time chasing minuscule gains.

Edited October 1, 20241 yr by Sethos