RAM SPD corruption warning

[cheesemp]

I was attempting to follow the instructions to OC my ram using the Ryzen RAM calculator and started getting CRC32 errors from the recommended SPD tool - Thaiphoon burner. Since going back to UEFI the XMP SPD seems completely junked. Recommending some crazy well out of range values now (16000Mhz anyone?). Anyone else seen anything like this? I reseated the RAM and switched off power at the PSU.

I can't see I've done anything wrong. Thaiphoon burner was the only SPD tool I was running, thaiphoon burner is only the free read only version and surely the SPD should be protected? I also only got thaiphoon burner from the official site.

Just wanted to 1) see if I did do anything wrong? 2) warn everyone that this process might be way more dangerous than you'd imagine - Its only supposed to be a case of reading the SPD and then inputting some tweaked values to the UEFI. I hadn't even run the calculator to generate custom timings .

[cheesemp]

I've end up returning the RAM - I still don't believe I did anything that could have written to the RAMs SPD so I've put it down to dodgy SPD. Went for some 3000 Corsair rather than 3200 Crucial this time. Looks like i've been lucky to switch from Micro-E to Samsung stuff but very nervous about touching the SPD with thaiphoon burner! Has OC'd to 3200 easily enough.

[watercooled]

It is weird if it's written something when it was supposed to be on read-only mode - perhaps it's worth contacting the developers to ask about this? If you still had the memory I would have suggested clearing CMOS and perhaps re-flashing BIOS just to rule it out but probably wouldn't have helped in this case.

It's an area I've honestly not got much experience in but like you say I'd exercise extreme caution using it again, at least until you know what caused the problem - some retailers may not be sympathetic to damage caused by third-party software if this is indeed the case.

I'm wondering whether there would be a way to restore defaults with the same software though?

[cheesemp]

It is weird if it's written something when it was supposed to be on read-only mode - perhaps it's worth contacting the developers to ask about this? If you still had the memory I would have suggested clearing CMOS and perhaps re-flashing BIOS just to rule it out but probably wouldn't have helped in this case.

It's an area I've honestly not got much experience in but like you say I'd exercise extreme caution using it again, at least until you know what caused the problem - some retailers may not be sympathetic to damage caused by third-party software if this is indeed the case.

I'm wondering whether there would be a way to restore defaults with the same software though?

There is but you need to buy it at nearly $30 which isn't worth it on £80 RAM! I could have input them into the UEFI by hand based on the known values but would have been painful. As for the technique - It seems to pretty popular tweaking your timings this way (heck at time of posting the post beneath this one is talking about it and using Thaiphoon burner) so I wasn't expecting it to be risky just to read the values. I've googled and found no reports of anything similar. Thankfully I bought it from a retailer who'll refund happily (The big A) but yes will not be rushing to try it again (or at least not with thaiphoon burner - maybe manually inputting the values read by the UEFI).

[watercooled]

Out of interest, what are the benefits of doing this vs say manually inputting timings in BIOS to avoid permanently changing anything. Is it just a case of it being faster to load up a profile?

[cheesemp]

Out of interest, what are the benefits of doing this vs say manually inputting timings in BIOS to avoid permanently changing anything. Is it just a case of it being faster to load up a profile?

That's the thing - It is just entering timing values into the BIOS - the difference is the Ryzen calc is supposed to have a good idea of the best timings you can get out of your particular chips. The Thaiphoon burner part is just to do a RAW read of the SPD XPM/DOCP values from the RAM to get an idea how good the manufacture has rated the chips. They set them to work on all systems and usually with a bias for Intel. They can go a lot tighter - Supposedly with the right Samsung B die chips you can get ~20% performance uplift.