So, I bought a prebuilt from Ibuypower and upgraded the memory.

(Motherboard is MSI b550-a pro cec)

https://www.newegg.com/G-SKILL-32GB-288-Pin-DDR4-SDRAM/p/N82E16820232928?Item=N82E16820232928

In the reviews, many people mentioned the need to enable xmp 2.0 in the bios to unlock the memory sticks to the advertised 3600mhz. (apparently they are stock as 2132mhz).
Others mentioned that they were using them at 3600mhz right out of the box, so I'm confused on this.

I also read a story recently about many bios that must be updated/flashed due to a major security flaw (no clue what it was otherwise I'd post it here)

1) Do I need to update/flash my bios? If so, how easy it that?

2) How can I tell what mhz my sticks are currently set up as?

3) I forgot my other question.





This post was edited by Borr on Dec 21 2021 12:21pm

You can check in task manager about your ram speed.. you can also overclock your ram.

Ok, I just checked the task manager and it shows as 3200. Cool, thanks! How would I get this up to the 3600?

How would I be able to tell what the (timings) are set to? I assume this has to do with overclocking them to work better.
Is this something I should do? Will I even notice a difference?

This post was edited by Borr on Dec 21 2021 12:26pm

not a big difference between 3200mhz ad 3600mhz. i dont over clock and im not famuiliar with msi bios so im prolly the wrong person to explain this but you need to enable your extreme memory profile (xmp) in your bios to overclock the memory. i would search for a youtube video on it.

should you do it? prolly not. can you do it? yes.

A bit more background on XMP. It's a profile setting that already overclocks your RAM. You enable/disable XMP thru your motherboard. Typically for RAM at 2800 or so higher, the speed shown is with XMP enabled.

What's weird in your situation is that you have 3600MHz and with XMP enabled, it's only going as high as 3200MHz. I'm not sure if this is a manufacturing error or if you purchased them used, you probably got scammed. Reading the RAM's serial number or SKU will help determine it...assuming they didn't swap the sticker.

Could your motherboard be a little bit weird and didn't turn on XMP the way it should have? Maybe...that's where the BIOS flash comes in or you can manually overclock your RAM thru BIOS.

This was very informative, thanks for taking the time to point this out. These were purchased new on newegg.

If we assume the sticker was swapped, how would I find out?

I don't understand why you would ask that.

If you purchased them new from NewEgg, and you have proof that you've done everything right (motherboard is updated/flashed, XMP is enabled), then take it back to NewEgg and ask for a replacement or refund.

This post was edited by Xet on Dec 21 2021 09:01pm

Sorry. I have dyslexia when putting thoughts to text. I misphrased my question I guess.

Bios had the dram set to auto. Manually setting it seems to work. Showing 3600 in task manager at least.

Should I do anything with the timings?

If you got 3600MHz, which it should be, then you don't need to change anything else.

Okay cool,. thanks!!

Just found out newegg is sending me another 32 gigs for free since I had some shipping issues.

Gg!

This post was edited by Borr on Dec 21 2021 09:36pm