XMP Troubleshooting - How to Fix Black Screens, Blue Screens and Random Crashing After Enabling XMP

Just because you bought RAM that's rated  at 3800, 4000, 5000 or whatever speed   doesn't necessarily mean your computer  can run it stably at that speed. It's   not uncommon to enable your RAM's XMP  and then see nothing but a black screen.   Or your computer boots up fine but then while  you're playing games or running other applications   you're greeted by the infamous blue screen of  death or your program randomly crashes to the   desktop. I'm not 100% certain about  this because I'm not a memory expert BUT my understanding is what's going on  is the memory controller on your CPU   isn't capable of running at  your RAM's rated XMP speed. The memory controller is what manages all of  the data going to and from your RAM. XMP as I   assume you know is a form of overclocking. When  you apply an XMP you're overclocking your RAM.   And while your RAM is rated to operate at that  speed you are now also overclocking your memory   controller which is built into your CPU and it  may or may not be able to run at that speed. If your RAM's XMP pushes your memory controller  faster than it's capable of running...   or pushes it right to it's limits... then you're  going to have stability issues which will manifest   themselves as black screens, blue screens,  random crashes as well as other system weirdness. So what can we do to fix it?  If you simply disable XMP   in your motherboard BIOS  that will fix the problem. BUT now you're running the RAM you paid a premium for   at it's base speed which I don't think  many people are going to be too happy with. Also there are some of you saying, "I can't  even get into my BIOS. After enabling XMP   all I get is a black screen  and I can't do anything." Well let's start with you guys first and then  we'll talk about what we can do to get at least   some of the performance that you  paid for back out of your RAM. If you're experiencing a black screen you're  probably freaking out right now thinking you   just bricked your motherboard or your RAM or  something. Don't worry... everything is fine,   you just need to disable the XMP,  and since we can't get into our BIOS   right now to do that we're going to  need to clear our motherboards CMOS. The CMOS is the chip on your motherboard where all  your settings for stuff like your CPU clock speed,   boot device, RAM speed and a lot of other stuff  is stored. When we clear the CMOS it will reset   all that stuff back to it's  default/factory settings. First we'll want to shut our computers power off  and unplug the power cord. You're then going to   have to open your computer up. Some motherboards  have a clear CMOS button on the motherboard   somewhere but most do not so most likely you're  going to have to do this one of two ways.   The first is to use the Clear  CMOS pins on your motherboard.   You may need to consult your  motherboard manual to locate them   but this is what they look like. Simply bridge  these pins with the tip of a screwdriver   or some other conductive metal object for 5  to 10 seconds and that should do the trick. The 2nd way is to remove this round battery  here on your motherboard. This battery provides   power to the CMOS chip allowing it to store all  your custom BIOS settings like your RAM's XMP.   Pop this battery out for 30  seconds or so and that should   kill the power to the CMOS long enough  to reset everything back to default. Just FYI, your motherboards clear CMOS pins  and battery are likely going to be hidden   behind your graphics card so if you don't  see them right away you're going to need   to remove your graphics card to get to them. If  you don't know how to do that I have a graphics   card upgrading video popping up in the cards  right now and linked in the video description   that shows how to both remove and  install a graphics card that should help. Ok... now that we can boot into our BIOS again   let's see what we can do about getting at least  some of that RAM performance back we paid for.   Just so you know this is going to be a quick and  dirty tutorial because RAM overclocking is not my   thing. If you want to get a more in depth tutorial  on manually overclocking your RAM where you adjust   the RAM speed, timings and the voltage and all  that stuff; there are other videos on YouTube   you're more than welcome to check out. I'm one  that only uses XMP because it makes overclocking   your RAM effortless. Basically providing you a  one step toggle switch allowing you to skip the   often times very time consuming trial and error  tweaking that is involved with RAM overclocking. So anyway, my quick and dirty solution to the  XMP crashing and blue screen problem is to first   enable our RAM's XMP. Before saving and exiting  though we want to go into our BIOS' advanced mode,   go to the AI Tweaker here... select Memory  Frequency and here we have a list of a bunch   of different RAM speeds. Some higher than our RAM  is rated at and others lower. The problem we're   trying to solve is due to our RAM speed being too  high so I'm going to pick the speed one step down   from my RAM's XMP speed and then Exit BIOS  and save the settings. I'll then load up a   game or other application where I was experiencing  crashing problems or whatever and see how it goes.   If it crashes again then I'll go back into  my BIOS and bump the Memory Frequency down   one more notch and repeat the  process until things run stably. At this point if you really want to try to  get the most performance possible and you're   willing to spend the time doing it you can  adjust the timings and the voltage and stuff   but I've only very briefly dabbled in that  kind of stuff. So I ain't gonna touch it in   this video. There are plenty of great RAM  overclocking guides on the internet though   so you shouldn't have any problem finding one.  Thanks for watching and the best of luck to you.

Channel: Maraksot78

Views: 284,438

Keywords: XMP, RAM, memory, overclocking, troubleshooting, fix black screen, fix blue screen, fix crashing, tutorial, informational, educational, how to, clear CMOS, what is CMOS, where is CMOS, BIOS, UEFI, how to enable XMP, how to disable XMP, manual overclock, memory frequency, memory speed, trouble shooting, dram, DRAM, DDR3, DDR4, DDR5, DDR

Id: Q8UihjknO_M

Length: 6min 22sec (382 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 05 2021