Titan 18 HX AI A2XWJG upgrade (CSODIMM and SSDs)

joao.sousa.domingo158102d7 said:
As I said previously, just get 128GB Kit (64GBx2) Kingston ValueRAM 6400MT/s DDR5 CSODIMM 52-51-51-102 (KVR64V52BD8-64) - they are stable and never had a problem.

Regarding SSDs, just look at the UPDATE on real-world SSD performance post above: forget RAID - even a gen5 SSD on a gen4 slot is faster than any RAID0 system of two gen5 SSDs (on gen5 + gen4 slots) or even three of them. And by faster, I mean real-world performance, which is all that matters.
I have a 4TB Samsung 9100 on the gen5 slot where I install OS and everything. And then I use the 2TB OEM gen5 Samsung and another gen4 4TB Samsung 990 Pro on other gen4 slots just for extra storage. No RAID, no nothing - it's slower and more risky in case of RAID0 or RAID5. (Nothing on the bottom right gen4 slot - one less potential 40/50°C source)
In today's gen5 SSD world, RAID only matters if you want to do redundancy - RAID1 (to have a copy of any given SSD).

My laptop looks like this:
View attachment 204047
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Okay. I didn't know if you changed anything from that set up or not. I will probably mirror your setup but replace the storage setup with 2x 8tb drives. I will get the same heatsinks and thermal barriers and leave the gen 4 port under the 5 empty.
 
Thank you so much for your info-packed post. I was wondering the same and questioning whether MSI even had a chance to test with 128GB RAMs since I believe those RAMs were not available in the market back then when MSI ran tests. I'm considering the same upgrade for my Vector 16 HX AI A2XWHG, Ultra i7 255HX, 5070Ti.

How is your experience so far with running LLMs? Are those RAMs still stable?
 
seabiscuit said:
Thank you so much for your info-packed post. I was wondering the same and questioning whether MSI even had a chance to test with 128GB RAMs since I believe those RAMs were not available in the market back then when MSI ran tests. I'm considering the same upgrade for my Vector 16 HX AI A2XWHG, Ultra i7 255HX, 5070Ti.

How is your experience so far with running LLMs? Are those RAMs still stable?
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So far it's been running fine without any problem. I train more CV models than actually run local LLMs.

gpt-oss-120b.png
 
To sum up, what is the best RAM that you can find now on the market when it comes to price/quality?
Is the XMP option in BIOS available?
Can you undervolt the processor and do any OC?
 
skubi23t said:
To sum up, what is the best RAM that you can find now on the market when it comes to price/quality?
Is the XMP option in BIOS available?
Can you undervolt the processor and do any OC?
Click to expand...
For price/quality specifically, I don't know. I only care about what's available as 2x64Gb. All I know is that there are the following RAMs:
- Crucial 128GB Kit (64GBx2) DDR5 6400MT/s CSODIMM 52-52-52-103
- Kingston ValueRAM 128GB Kit (64GBx2) 6400MT/s DDR5 CSODIMM 52-51-51-102 (KVR64V52BD8-64)
- and then if you want lower CL, you'd need to stick to SODIMMs like Crucial 128GB Kit (2X64GB) DDR5 RAM 5600MHz - importantly, as far as I know, no one was able to push this to 6400 @CL38/40 with XMP, and even worse they have not even been able to achieve the official 5600 speed - BIOS downgrades it automatically to 5200MHz..

Now, regarding CSODIMMs, I never saw the Crucial kit above on sale. And unfortunately, Kingston was having some trouble with their 64Gb CSODIMM ValueRAM sticks, reason why they pulled them off the market (thought by now they would have found what was wrong but apparently not). I did buy some of the first ValueRAM sticks and never had a single problem with them, even under heavy stress testing - I even contacted Kingston, and they told me my sticks were not affected. So I got lucky.

The MSI Titan 18 HX AI allows messing with XMP profiles under the advanced MSI BIOS - but note that I never played with any of that. I have not even tried to OCed my RAM sticks. In my case, I need stability under stress on default speeds, which is what I proved with the RAM benchmarking post I made a while ago. My BIOS is all default.

You can potentially undervolt cpu and OC cpu/gpu as well, but I only run the GPU MSI Centre "Extreme" oc at 200MHz max. That's stable for me even under heavy load, and it's enough.
 
joao.sousa.domingo158102d7 said:
For price/quality specifically, I don't know. I only care about what's available as 2x64Gb. All I know is that there are the following RAMs:
- Crucial 128GB Kit (64GBx2) DDR5 6400MT/s CSODIMM 52-52-52-103
- Kingston ValueRAM 128GB Kit (64GBx2) 6400MT/s DDR5 CSODIMM 52-51-51-102 (KVR64V52BD8-64)
- and then if you want lower CL, you'd need to stick to SODIMMs like Crucial 128GB Kit (2X64GB) DDR5 RAM 5600MHz - importantly, as far as I know, no one was able to push this to 6400 @CL38/40 with XMP, and even worse they have not even been able to achieve the official 5600 speed - BIOS downgrades it automatically to 5200MHz..

Now, regarding CSODIMMs, I never saw the Crucial kit above on sale. And unfortunately, Kingston was having some trouble with their 64Gb CSODIMM ValueRAM sticks, reason why they pulled them off the market (thought by now they would have found what was wrong but apparently not). I did buy some of the first ValueRAM sticks and never had a single problem with them, even under heavy stress testing - I even contacted Kingston, and they told me my sticks were not affected. So I got lucky.

The MSI Titan 18 HX AI allows messing with XMP profiles under the advanced MSI BIOS - but note that I never played with any of that. I have not even tried to OCed my RAM sticks. In my case, I need stability under stress on default speeds, which is what I proved with the RAM benchmarking post I made a while ago. My BIOS is all default.

You can potentially undervolt cpu and OC cpu/gpu as well, but I only run the GPU MSI Centre "Extreme" oc at 200MHz max. That's stable for me even under heavy load, and it's enough.
Click to expand...
The above CSODIMM link redirect to desktop model of memories ?
 
joao.sousa.domingo158102d7 said:
Crucial removed the 128Gb (2x64Gb) CSODIMMs, just like Kingston did.. (Maybe there are general problems with CSODIMMs of 2x64Gb
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Most of the current CPUs are capable of 2x64GB DDR5-5600 or 2x32GB DDR5-6400 at 1.1V
But many of them have stability issues with 2x64GB DDR5-6400 at 1.1V
Those stability issues can be corrected with a bit of overvolting (1.20 ... 1.30V), but in a laptop overvolting (XMP) is the last thing you want.
That's why the 2x64GB DDR5-6400 kits are not recommended anymore for laptops.
 
RemusM said:
Most of the current CPUs are capable of 2x64GB DDR5-5600 or 2x32GB DDR5-6400 at 1.1V
But many of them have stability issues with 2x64GB DDR5-6400 at 1.1V
Those stability issues can be corrected with a bit of overvolting (1.20 ... 1.30V), but in a laptop overvolting (XMP) is the last thing you want.
That's why the 2x64GB DDR5-6400 kits are not recommended anymore for laptops.
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Somehow it works and runs stable for me.. I guess I got lucky on the CPU.
 
joao.sousa.domingo158102d7 said:
Somehow it works and runs stable for me.. I guess I got lucky on the CPU.
Click to expand...

That's a great memory kit and with a bit of luck a CPU IMC can manage to run it stable with 1.1V only.
The problem here is that it does not work stable for all the customers.
So you cannot recommend it to anyone ... ;)
 
joao.sousa.domingo158102d7 said:
So far it's been running fine without any problem. I train more CV models than actually run local LLMs.

View attachment 204634
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Great post... very encouraging, thanks. I've finally made up my mind. Seems like we should wait for the production to kick in for those RAMs to show up in the market. And also the fact that RemusM mentioned above is something to consider before hand. What's interesting is the 64GB kit is still available on Crucial site. I'll wait for 128GB kit. If those kits don't show up, I'll get the 64GB kit and will try to be happy with them.
 
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3.14nkerato159902e3 said:
Great post, lot of interesting information here. However it's sad to see how the RAM situation looks now...
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Indeed. Good thing I got my 128Gb CSODIMMs last year. Would have paid a pretty penny for it now.. and it's not even available anymore.

I'm still selling my OEM Micron 64GB [2x32GB] DDR5 6400MHz CSODIMM sticks, if anyone is interested.
 
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