Pro Z790-A WiFi + DDR5 6400 XMP Stability Issues with Recent A4 Bios

WoodburyMan

PRO Z790-A WiFi 13900K / GE66-12UGS 12900HK
Joined
Apr 10, 2023
Messages
5
Greetings!

I have the Pro Z790-A WiFi paired with a i9 13900K.

I am also having stability issues with DDR5 memory. I have been trying to run DDR5 6400 memory in XMP mode with varying degrees of stability. (2 x 32gb sticks kit).
The memory I have specifically is G.Skill F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK ( https://www.gskill.com/product/165/374/1665644504/F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK which is DDR5-6400 CL32-39-39-102 1.40V ). The memory is listed on MSI's compatibility site as compatible, and on G.Skill's site. I'm running it with a Cooler Master MasterAir MA612 Stealth with a decent 6-Pipe heatsink. A nice even thermal paste spread of Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut was put on. On benchmarks maxes out at 85C, games and real use scenario like 75C. I don't run any overclocking on the CPU, just default BIOS settings, aside from XMP mode. I have also tried witching my new PSU for this build out with a known good PSU from my last build with the same results.

Running A3 or earlier BIOS, the system was somewhat stable running in XMP mode with 6400MT stock XMP timings and voltage. I would get occasional hiccups with notoriously glitchy titles like COD. Some random odd behavior but usable stable. However after the A4 BIOS update, it's downright unable. I noticed in the changelog there were memory compatibility changes. I once in a great while get a BSOD in Windows, related to system stability, some more narrow as Clock Watchdog Timeout, but mostly in games get random exit errors. (COD:MWII and Fortnite being biggest offenders). On A4 BIOS the only stable setting is running stock 4800MT settings. I have not tried any other settings besides that and XMP, and if anyone had any pointers who may have this issue, any timings that worked for you would be helpful.

Wondering what others results with DDR5 6400 is in XMP mode. I see others have success running it straight up, others having issues, perhaps due to the processor bin lottery with onboard controller variations. Any specific timing settings, clockrates, BIOS settings to try that are known stable for others with XMP 6400 2x32gb memory would be VERY helpful.

Also, I have run memory86+, memtest86, and Windows Memory diagnostic on it in 4800MT stock settings with zero errors. Running on 6400MT XMP profile, I get random single series errors here and there which lead me to believe the memory is fine, just an issue of timings.

TIA
 
Yes, it appears the DDR5-6400 XMP profile is not memory-trained into a stable state on the newest BIOS, from your description. Therefore you should avoid trying to run that profile there, these bit errors can also corrupt your Windows installation over time. Everything that's eventually saved on your drive, it all has to go through the RAM first, and you don't want that to corrupt your files.

Now, you could try several things with the voltages (not the DRAM voltage, more the memory-controller-related ones), but what you could also do is report this by opening a ticket with MSI, and telling them what you wrote here. If it was stable before, then it's a matter of fine-tuning with the BIOS.

The temperatures are not uncommon, especially if you have the CPU off the leash with the power limits in the BIOS quite high (let alone maxed out). Then those temperatures are actually good for a 13900K, which is a CPU with an extremely high power draw which is close to uncoolable for all but the best off-the-shelf coolers, see here.
 
Yes, it appears the DDR5-6400 XMP profile is not memory-trained into a stable state on the newest BIOS, from your description. Therefore you should avoid trying to run that profile there, these bit errors can also corrupt your Windows installation over time. Everything that's eventually saved on your drive, it all has to go through the RAM first, and you don't want that to corrupt your files.

Now, you could try several things with the voltages (not the DRAM voltage, more the memory-controller-related ones), but what you could also do is report this by opening a ticket with MSI, and telling them what you wrote here. If it was stable before, then it's a matter of fine-tuning with the BIOS.

The temperatures are not uncommon, especially if you have the CPU off the leash with the power limits in the BIOS quite high (let alone maxed out). Then those temperatures are actually good for a 13900K, which is a CPU with an extremely high power draw which is close to uncoolable for all but the best off-the-shelf coolers, see here.
Thank you! I submitted a support ticket with my findings. Waiting to hear back from them. Hopefully they will release a updated BIOS image soon to correct the 6400 XMP timings issue. Ill run 4800 for now for stability so my fresh clean Windows install doesn't trash itself through corrupt memory write backs... Never fun dealing with those!
 
You could try an interim setting like DDR5-5600 for example, that has a good chance of working. But i recommend strict stability-testing for that too.
Then let's see what MSI reply about your DDR5-6400 not being stable anymore.
 
I know I have a different setup (z690, 12700k), but I also have a 6400 g.skill kit (2×16gb though). While it posts, passes all ram tests I throw at it etc, it's still not fully stable, some games work fine, some crash, some can work for a couple of hours and THEN crash.

Since you were getting occasional issues and bsod not just on this bios but on previous ones, maybe you're getting to the limit of what the cpu can handle?

I know 13th gen should handle high ram speeds easier than my 12th, but it's still worth just trying a lower speed first, as you may have just got unlucky.

I agree, 5600 is a good starting place. It's what I settled with now for my kit. I can run it at 5800, but with looser timings, and anything 6000 or above, posts, passes all tests, but still crashes in real world situations (gaming).

Maybe start at 5600, make sure that's stable, then slowly start increasing until you start getting issues again, when your system starts crashing again, you know you need to dial it back.

For what it's worth, going by the aida64 benchmarks (which I know are not always the most reliable, but they're quick and easy to compare things), my 5600 with timings matching the row on hwinfo64, and then some sub timings for hynix ram from one of buildzoids videos, performance at 5600 is now very very close to the xmp 6400 profile anyway, except it's stable and also I can lower to voltage to 1.35V instead of 1.4.

According to aida64 I'm getting read rate of 90k, write 87k, copy 85k and latency 66.4ns. This is coming from 73k,67.7k,66.8k and 91.4ns at stock 4800, and compares to around 93k,90k,87k and 63ns at xmp (around 100k,95k,94k 61ns xmp+ buildzoid settings)

So you can see that, even at 5600, with decent sub timings, you can get much better performance than stock 4800, but also that the performance increase gets smaller and smaller as you increase speed.

I know it's annoying not necessarily getting the speed you paid for, but better to find stability than chase the xmp speed. Find comfort in the fact that you're not losing MUCH by reducing the speed slightly.
 
Greetings!

I have the Pro Z790-A WiFi paired with a i9 13900K.

I am also having stability issues with DDR5 memory. I have been trying to run DDR5 6400 memory in XMP mode with varying degrees of stability. (2 x 32gb sticks kit).
The memory I have specifically is G.Skill F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK ( https://www.gskill.com/product/165/374/1665644504/F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK which is DDR5-6400 CL32-39-39-102 1.40V ). The memory is listed on MSI's compatibility site as compatible, and on G.Skill's site. I'm running it with a Cooler Master MasterAir MA612 Stealth with a decent 6-Pipe heatsink. A nice even thermal paste spread of Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut was put on. On benchmarks maxes out at 85C, games and real use scenario like 75C. I don't run any overclocking on the CPU, just default BIOS settings, aside from XMP mode. I have also tried witching my new PSU for this build out with a known good PSU from my last build with the same results.

Running A3 or earlier BIOS, the system was somewhat stable running in XMP mode with 6400MT stock XMP timings and voltage. I would get occasional hiccups with notoriously glitchy titles like COD. Some random odd behavior but usable stable. However after the A4 BIOS update, it's downright unable. I noticed in the changelog there were memory compatibility changes. I once in a great while get a BSOD in Windows, related to system stability, some more narrow as Clock Watchdog Timeout, but mostly in games get random exit errors. (COD:MWII and Fortnite being biggest offenders). On A4 BIOS the only stable setting is running stock 4800MT settings. I have not tried any other settings besides that and XMP, and if anyone had any pointers who may have this issue, any timings that worked for you would be helpful.

Wondering what others results with DDR5 6400 is in XMP mode. I see others have success running it straight up, others having issues, perhaps due to the processor bin lottery with onboard controller variations. Any specific timing settings, clockrates, BIOS settings to try that are known stable for others with XMP 6400 2x32gb memory would be VERY helpful.

Also, I have run memory86+, memtest86, and Windows Memory diagnostic on it in 4800MT stock settings with zero errors. Running on 6400MT XMP profile, I get random single series errors here and there which lead me to believe the memory is fine, just an issue of timings.

TIA
I have the exact same CPU + DRAM (Z790 Tomahawk) and I was starting to think my DRAM was bad because the 2 x 16GB DRAM kit with the same timings worked well. But I have had the same issues with both the H30 and H40 BIOS.
I use Linpack Xtreme + HCI MemTest Pro for testing and even reducing the DRAM to 6200MT/s produces errors but is mostly stable. I have been unable to get the XMP profile stable after trying for WEEKS... using huge voltage increase on every IMC and DRAM option and lossening the timings.
 
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Same on a Z790 Edge Wifi DDR4 with the newest BIOS 7D91v16 couldnt get stable CL17 4266 in GEAR1 so I had to revert it back to 7D91v14.

I hate this from MSI everytime when they release a new BIOS it causes unstability instead of improvements or stuff like that big thumbs down for this MSI :biggthumbsdown::biggthumbsdown::biggthumbsdown:
 
Greetings!

I have the Pro Z790-A WiFi paired with a i9 13900K.

I am also having stability issues with DDR5 memory. I have been trying to run DDR5 6400 memory in XMP mode with varying degrees of stability. (2 x 32gb sticks kit).
The memory I have specifically is G.Skill F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK ( https://www.gskill.com/product/165/374/1665644504/F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK which is DDR5-6400 CL32-39-39-102 1.40V ). The memory is listed on MSI's compatibility site as compatible, and on G.Skill's site. I'm running it with a Cooler Master MasterAir MA612 Stealth with a decent 6-Pipe heatsink. A nice even thermal paste spread of Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut was put on. On benchmarks maxes out at 85C, games and real use scenario like 75C. I don't run any overclocking on the CPU, just default BIOS settings, aside from XMP mode. I have also tried witching my new PSU for this build out with a known good PSU from my last build with the same results.

Running A3 or earlier BIOS, the system was somewhat stable running in XMP mode with 6400MT stock XMP timings and voltage. I would get occasional hiccups with notoriously glitchy titles like COD. Some random odd behavior but usable stable. However after the A4 BIOS update, it's downright unable. I noticed in the changelog there were memory compatibility changes. I once in a great while get a BSOD in Windows, related to system stability, some more narrow as Clock Watchdog Timeout, but mostly in games get random exit errors. (COD:MWII and Fortnite being biggest offenders). On A4 BIOS the only stable setting is running stock 4800MT settings. I have not tried any other settings besides that and XMP, and if anyone had any pointers who may have this issue, any timings that worked for you would be helpful.

Wondering what others results with DDR5 6400 is in XMP mode. I see others have success running it straight up, others having issues, perhaps due to the processor bin lottery with onboard controller variations. Any specific timing settings, clockrates, BIOS settings to try that are known stable for others with XMP 6400 2x32gb memory would be VERY helpful.

Also, I have run memory86+, memtest86, and Windows Memory diagnostic on it in 4800MT stock settings with zero errors. Running on 6400MT XMP profile, I get random single series errors here and there which lead me to believe the memory is fine, just an issue of timings.

TIA
Hi OP and everyone,
Currently chasing what I paid for as well (XMP) I have tried a Z790 Tomahawk and now a Z790 Edge Wifi with two different 13700k’s and have the exact same 2x32gb CL32 kit from G.Skill.

Disable XMP and manually set the following: 100mhz clock G2 at 6200Mhz, primary timings as 30-35-35-35-75-410 DRAM voltage at 1.40 auto on everything else. It’s not XMP, but it has a faster CAS with a slight MHZ loss.
Will also be reporting my problem thanks to Citay’s advice.
 
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Hi OP and everyone,
Currently chasing what I paid for as well (XMP) I have tried a Z790 Tomahawk and now a Z790 Edge Wifi with two different 13700k’s and have the exact same 2x32gb CL32 kit from G.Skill.

Disable XMP and manually set the following: 100mhz clock G2 at 6200Mhz, primary timings as 30-35-35-35-75-410 DRAM voltage at 1.40 auto on everything else. It’s not XMP, but it has a faster CAS with a slight MHZ loss.
Will also be reporting my problem thanks to Citay’s advice.
Thanks! I'll give those settings a try. A little better performance closer to the 6400 I should have would be better.

I've done DDR5 5600 MHz (5586... 2793x2 1:28) with 36-36-36-70-113 with 1.35v VERY stable. This was simply done with selecting it in the EZ Memory selector with XMP off. I have not has a BSOD or game glitch in over a month now.

I have not heard anything back from support after they asked to try lowering settings and I reported it worked fine. Assuming it's being tested for the next BIOS release or something.

***EDIT***
I played several dozen rounds of COD, Fortnite and a few other applications with no crashing or hiccups. Seems good so far at the same 6200 settings you used.
 
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Thanks! I'll give those settings a try. A little better performance closer to the 6400 I should have would be better.

I've done DDR5 5600 MHz (5586... 2793x2 1:28) with 36-36-36-70-113 with 1.35v VERY stable. This was simply done with selecting it in the EZ Memory selector with XMP off. I have not has a BSOD or game glitch in over a month now.

I have not heard anything back from support after they asked to try lowering settings and I reported it worked fine. Assuming it's being tested for the next BIOS release or something.

***EDIT***
I played several dozen rounds of COD, Fortnite and a few other applications with no crashing or hiccups. Seems good so far at the same 6200 settings you used.
That is awesome! I sure hope MSI comes to us with a better solution than try a lower MHZ and will check frequently for that next bios update.

I managed to tighten the timings on our kit a TON- I have passed a few rounds of memtest86, ycruncher, 20 minutes of Aida64, a full stability test on CinibenchR23, but am yet to put it to the real test with a deep gaming session.

System latency according to Aida finally broke under 59ms with a transfer approaching 97k MBPS.

I cannot, for the life of me, get it to post stable at 6500Mhz with anything better than JDEC timings. :(
 
That is awesome! I sure hope MSI comes to us with a better solution than try a lower MHZ and will check frequently for that next bios update.

I managed to tighten the timings on our kit a TON- I have passed a few rounds of memtest86, ycruncher, 20 minutes of Aida64, a full stability test on CinibenchR23, but am yet to put it to the real test with a deep gaming session.

System latency according to Aida finally broke under 59ms with a transfer approaching 97k MBPS.

I cannot, for the life of me, get it to post stable at 6400Mhz+** with anything better than JDEC timings at 1.40v. :(
 
just out of curiosity, what voltages are you guys setting?

Only asking because I found a post on another forum that mentions how certain voltages tend to sweet spot and how sometimes LOWERING certain voltages can actually improve stability.

When I enable XMP and my kit goes to 6400, the system raises SA voltage from 0.908V to 1.28V, but this seems to be too high for my system

Following that post, I set voltages to:-

SA voltage 0.95V
CPU VVDQ 1.35V
CPU VDD2 1.35V
DRAM 1.4V
DRAM VDDQ 1.4V

tested with testmem5 absolut profile. Only had time to run that twice (about an hour and 10 to an hour 15 minutes each run), and ran occt mem test for the standard 30 minutes. No errors so far.

I wouldn't call this conclusive yet, as I didn't get time to test more.....but I also flew for around 40 minutes in Microsoft flight simulator, and had no crashes. So reducing the SA voltage certainly APPEARS to have done the trick on my system.

This is also WITH the sub timings from the buildzoid easy ddr5 timings for hynix video. So I'm running 6400-32-39-39-28 333/233/65000 and then a bunch of other timings.

I need to do a lot more testing, i'll run tm5 a few more times, then test with kharu for 10000% and hci for 1000%. Then test a bunch of games.

Might be worth giving a go though, worst case, it doesn't work and you can just reset back to what you had?

I did read in that thread some CPU's really don't like high SA, while others can't reach higher ram speeds without it. so YMMV.

::EDIT::

CREDIT TO Dr DRO on the techpowerup forums for the info about reducing SA voltage.

:: EDIT 2::

have now passed tm5 absolut a number of times, kahru to 10001%, hci 20 instances all over 1000%. I'm also no longer (so far at least) getting the weird "sometimes on boot, or restart, it'll switch itself off and on again" thing that I was getting before. So it seems like just keeping SA voltage fairly low has had a massive impact on the stability. I'll need to play games with it to be sure, as I've had issues before where things passed a bunch of tests but still failed in games.... but touch wood, seems like this has done the trick

:: EDIT 3::
never mind....

Again, passes every possible stress test I can find, literally hours and hours of tests, zero errors..... go to play games, and games are being randomly tabbed out or controls frozen.

Turn everything stock, no ram oc, stock 4800, and the issues disappear.

Really don't understand why, but it seems like any kind of adjustment, be it ram oc, cpu undervolt, you undervolt, and even if it provides some small performance boost, it always leads to some kind of issue in game.

So for me, it's back to everything stock. 4800 ram, stock cpu, stock gpu. Might not be getting the full potential, but at least games just work.
 
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just out of curiosity, what voltages are you guys setting?

Only asking because I found a post on another forum that mentions how certain voltages tend to sweet spot and how sometimes LOWERING certain voltages can actually improve stability.

When I enable XMP and my kit goes to 6400, the system raises SA voltage from 0.908V to 1.28V, but this seems to be too high for my system

Following that post, I set voltages to:-

SA voltage 0.95V
CPU VVDQ 1.35V
CPU VDD2 1.35V
DRAM 1.4V
DRAM VDDQ 1.4V

tested with testmem5 absolut profile. Only had time to run that twice (about an hour and 10 to an hour 15 minutes each run), and ran occt mem test for the standard 30 minutes. No errors so far.

I wouldn't call this conclusive yet, as I didn't get time to test more.....but I also flew for around 40 minutes in Microsoft flight simulator, and had no crashes. So reducing the SA voltage certainly APPEARS to have done the trick on my system.

This is also WITH the sub timings from the buildzoid easy ddr5 timings for hynix video. So I'm running 6400-32-39-39-28 333/233/65000 and then a bunch of other timings.

I need to do a lot more testing, i'll run tm5 a few more times, then test with kharu for 10000% and hci for 1000%. Then test a bunch of games.

Might be worth giving a go though, worst case, it doesn't work and you can just reset back to what you had?

I did read in that thread some CPU's really don't like high SA, while others can't reach higher ram speeds without it. so YMMV.

::EDIT::

CREDIT TO Dr DRO on the techpowerup forums for the info about reducing SA voltage.

:: EDIT 2::

have now passed tm5 absolut a number of times, kahru to 10001%, hci 20 instances all over 1000%. I'm also no longer (so far at least) getting the weird "sometimes on boot, or restart, it'll switch itself off and on again" thing that I was getting before. So it seems like just keeping SA voltage fairly low has had a massive impact on the stability. I'll need to play games with it to be sure, as I've had issues before where things passed a bunch of tests but still failed in games.... but touch wood, seems like this has done the trick

:: EDIT 3::
never mind....

Again, passes every possible stress test I can find, literally hours and hours of tests, zero errors..... go to play games, and games are being randomly tabbed out or controls frozen.

Turn everything stock, no ram oc, stock 4800, and the issues disappear.

Really don't understand why, but it seems like any kind of adjustment, be it ram oc, cpu undervolt, you undervolt, and even if it provides some small performance boost, it always leads to some kind of issue in game.

So for me, it's back to everything stock. 4800 ram, stock cpu, stock gpu. Might not be getting the full potential, but at least games just work.
Hmmmm.... might not have been the ram or undervolt doing this.

I tried using a focus logger to see what was tabbing me out, it was "explorer.exe"....I.e. it's just windows.

Tried changing a bunch of things one at a time, gaming mode, hags, notifications all off, tried to think of anything related to the windows system in general that might be stealing focus or something that I'd previously changed.

Nothing made a difference.

Tried setting some usb options in bios, as I don't really need usb3 speeds anyway and had heard that disabling that can improve usb compatibility.... in case it was a usb device tabbing out somehow.

Made no difference.

Rebooted a lot between all these tests, no difference.

Then out of nowhere, changed nothing else, but suddenly it's not tabbing out anymore.

Very odd.

Anyway, the ram settings seem to actually still be stable after all, so def worth adjusting the SA voltage if your ram timings were previously seeming to produce errors etc.


::EDIT::


never mind...again....everything was working totally fine...got up this morning, won't even boot to windows, bsod and boot loop. Managed to eventually get into bios using the mash delete key method....set everything default apart from a few usb settings and my fans....back into windows....luckily no corruption detected in chkdsk/sfc/dism
 
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Bios A5 was released in the last few days. I just flashed it.

For fun I went back to square one and enabled XMP mode, nothing else. I ran 4 rounds of COD no problem with shader compiling on it. My hopes are it now trains properly on XMP mode, I think that was broken in A4.

More tests to come, I don't 100% trust this yet.

**EDIT** Update 1: About 3 hours of Fortnite later, no crashes as well. Optimistic they fixed XMP mode training.
 
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Update #2: A few more hours of Fortnite, and a few hours of Diablo 4 still no issues. I think they fixed this with A5 Bios running XMP mode @ 6400 natively.
 
Don't think it has been resolved with neither A5 nor A6 (7D91vH6) update.....Im having the same issue, especially playing sim racing with F1 2023. Game either boots out of the race and goes back to game's menu or sometimes crashes to desktop. Im also running i9-13900 on MSI z790 tomahawk with he same G.Skill F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK.

I haven't tried the suggested XMP profile of 6200 mentioned above. Just ran into this post and will try hopefully this evening.

@WoodburyMan & @Neffjohn15ac02da have you guys tried it with the newest 7D91vH6 BIOS?
 
Hello friends, I do not speak English, I apologize in advance.

I collected a new system.
MSI Z790P motherboard / i5 13600KF / G.skill DDR5 2x 32Gb. / 500 gb NvMe m2 SSD

Unfortunately, when I turn on or restart the PC, the BIOS starts loading the system after 30-40 seconds. Sometimes it doesn't boot at all. I've done all the settings I know, no OC, default settings, nothing changes.

I updated the BIOS to the latest version today, no change.

I don't know where to start to solve the problem anymore.
From what I read above, I understand that the problem is the memory, but I'm not sure, because I don't speak English.

I trust you will give me some advice, thank you.
 
What's your exact G.Skill RAM kit model name? When there is a boot delay, which one of the "EZ Debug LEDs" is on (they are above the 24-pin ATX header)? Also, which LED is on when the PC doesn't want to boot at all? What is your exact SSD model, CPU cooler model, PSU model?
 
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