Registered memory in a Ryzen system.

[Marck]

Hello everyone.

I am building a PC with a Ryzen 3600 and an Asrock motherboard.  The board and processor support ecc memory.  My question is will reg ecc ram run.  The specs of both say non reg only. The reading i have done i am fairly sure has confirmed that it wont.  But what i am not sure about is if its a case of it will work but without making use of the functionality of registered ram or if its a straight no it will not work.

And the second question is if it will run are you better of running 16 gb of faster ram or 32 gb of slower ram? It would be 3200 vs 2400(i think thats the speed of the reg ecc ram)

I have ordered everything else and just wanted to confirm this before i buy ram.  Or buy ram.

Thanks
M

[wraper]

Registered ECC will not work with desktop CPUs/motherboards. You need unbuffered RAM with or without ECC. You can overclock RAM. Most of 3200 Mhz modules actually use lower tier RAM chips, often cheapest 2133 MHz grade and overclock them.

[Marck]

Perfect thanks off to buy some ram.

[RoGeorge]

I would rather have slower 32GB RAM than faster 16GB.

Then, 3200MHz vs 2400MHz doesn't mean much for comparing the RAM speed.  Those numbers does not compare like it would be the difference in a processor speed.  For RAM, the timing (CL) is often more important than the RAM clock.  A 2400MHz RAM with low CL timings can be faster than a 3200MHz RAM with lots of CAS waiting cycles (bigger CL numbers).

[Ampera]

It's all anecdotes from me, but I've heard that Ryzen platforms happen to be specially designed to take advantage of higher RAM clock speeds.

[wraper]

It's all anecdotes from me, but I've heard that Ryzen platforms happen to be specially designed to take advantage of higher RAM clock speeds.

It depends on which CPU in particular. For 3000 series there is very little gain going above 3200 MHz with good timings.

[Ampera]

Suits me, I have a 3950X with 64GB of DDR4-3200

[BravoV]

And the second question is if it will run are you better of running 16 gb of faster ram or 32 gb of slower ram? It would be 3200 vs 2400(i think thats the speed of the reg ecc ram)

If your dekstop is constantly running close to 16GB, or worst the OS keep swapping memory even on fast storage like SSD/NVME, bigger memory wins, even at stock speed.

Coincidentally just bought ECC RAM 2 x 16GB for my upcoming Ryzen build.