setting ram speed Aspire xc 1660

Jvoss1016

i have a Aspire xc 1660-g in which i have installed new sticks of ram into. the ram i purchased is capable of 3200 MHz  and my Pc says that 2666MHz is max. upon booting both sticks of ram was recognized and is working however it is only operating at 2133MHz. ive looked into the bio of my pc and can not find an option to change the speed. would a bios update solve this issue? 

Thread was edited to add model name to the title

Leostat

What pc, and what ram are you using ? 

Acer only supports something called the 'jedec' speed of the ram, so it could be that the default speed is 2133 and it's only capable of 3200 with xmp

ttttt

@Jvoss1016

Give us more descriptions of your RAM sticks. 

A XMP RAM stick being used in non-overclocking environment will be running at the slowest native speed of the motherboard ( that is, 2133 MHz) for B560 chipset( your motherboard's chipset). 

One of my desktops using XMP RAM sticks had that 2133 MHZ speed before turning on the overclock feature.

billsey

Likely the "3200" you bought isn't really 3200. It is 2133 with the option to overclock using an XMP profile to 3200. Since the XC-1660 doesn't have XMP capabilities the memory run at it's base speed or 2133. And, since all memory on the system has to run at the same speed, the stock memory is slowed to match the new memory.

Jvoss1016

I bought the Corsair vengeance ram sticks. I installed 2 sticks of 8gb for a total of 16gb of ram. Yes I understand that the ram is designed and tested to be stable at overclocking at 3200mhz. The specs on the PC shows that it's capable of running ram speeds of 2666mhz. The PC is currently running the ram at the native 2133mhz and when entering the system bios I can't change that. Hopefully that clears it up 

Jvoss1016

billsey said:

Likely the "3200" you bought isn't really 3200. It is 2133 with the option to overclock using an XMP profile to 3200. Since the XC-1660 doesn't have XMP capabilities the memory run at it's base speed or 2133. And, since all memory on the system has to run at the same speed, the stock memory is slowed to match the new memory.

The original ram installed in the PC was 8gb 3200mz can't remember the brand. I removed that and installed 2 new sticks of 8gb Corsair vengeance ram capable of 3200mhz with the xmp profile. I tried to up the speed on the PC in the bios from the native 2133mhz to 2666mhz which is specified as max in the PC specs, after getting to the bios screen I realized I couldn't adjust the speed. I see that there is 4 bios updates available and didn't know if either of those would make it capable of adjusting the ram speeds or overclocking. 

Leostat

Afraid not, the UEFI will chose the JEDEC speeds provided by the ram, for example the part number CMK16GX4M2B3200C16 will choose 2100 as its the highest JEDEC it offers ( https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/ram/85259-corsair-vengeance-lpx-16gb-ddr4-3200/ )  . The UEFI upates dont generally add features that often, just fix the odd bug here and there

ttttt

@Jvoss1016

If you can return the XMP RAM sticks, it will be a good idea to do that.
You are actually slowing down the RAM from 2666 MHz to 2133 MHz by using XMP RAM. 

It is doubtful that future BIOS update will include the feature to enable XMP.
There should be nothing in BIOS to adjust RAM speed, as the motherboard does that job already.

billsey

Yes, XMP is really only used in gaming rigs so far. You need to swap those out for the correct memory. If Acer put in 3200 it was likely because they got a good deal on them when memory availability was tight during the COVID thing. They have done that with several models that we have seen...