I was wondering if I can stick a DDR5 SODIMM 6000MT/s kit in my future Framework laptop and load the non-JEDEC XMP or EXPO profiles to get higher performance out of my laptop?
DDR5 6000MT/s is known to be the sweetspot for the latest AMD Ryzen generation and Framework unfortunately only ship with DDR5 5600MT/s modules with unspecified timings.
Are non-JEDEC memory profiles supported by the BIOS and can they be applied? Most XMP/EXPO profiles for SODIMMs run at the same JEDEC v1.1 voltages, thus power consumption and temperatures of the modules should remain the same.
In theory, interesting sure… but where would you even find it for sale?
The usual suppliers I go through don’t list anything like that in notebook size. Even took a look on Newegg (Australian region), where 5600mhz is the best on offer.
In the US, you can find it on sites like Amazon, Provantage, and Newegg. Not quite easy to find or search. Kingston Fury Impact 16gb-64gb, 4800mhz-6400mhz kits.
I made an amazon list for easy search. Doesnt have all the DDR5 kits.
When I’ve looked at available DDR5 5600 SODIMMs virtually all of them are XMP certified. I’m hoping this isn’t a compatibility issue with the Framework AMDs.
Having XMP Profiles is basically never a problem. The question is what Jedec profile is on it.
Because for example (non-SoDimm, just beause I recently looked it up) Corsair has a bunch of DDR5 5600 kits, that only do 5600 with XMP, but Jedec they are 4800.
So if you don’t want to, or cannot use XMP, they will fall back to at most 4800.
While G.Skill has a a bunch of similar XMP 5600 kits that are also 5600 according to Jedec, just at higher latencies. If your host does not have memory overclocking options or reads XMP, the Jedec profiles are what count. Do not buy XMP modules that do not also tell you what Jedec profiles they have.
That was also a huge problem for DDR4 3200, which existed quite early on as XMP on modules that were otherwise 2133 Jedec.
That’s non-XMP or EXPO. So what it is advertised at, is Jedec. So Jedec 5600. Which should be fully backwards compatible to all lower Jedec speeds, if needed.
Only start to worry about that if some form of overclocking is advertised or the voltages are above Jedec standard (which is 1.1V for DDR5).
@Ray519 okay thank you. there are some reviews on it saying it only ran at 4800mhz on some laptop models that didn’t support xmp/expo. but I couldn’t find anything on the listing or around the internet that it needed xmp/expo.
That particular set is pretty clear that it follows Jedec. Maybe a similar set, but not the exact same?
Or the host just does not support 5600? Like Intels 12th gen officially only supported up to 4800.
Without any overclocking those will stick to the highest Jedec profile that is still within their own official abilities.
The FAQ about RAM in the Framework 16 order configuration says “We recommend avoiding XMP DDR5”. I could understand saying “XMP profiles are not supported and will be ignored”, but the FAQ sounds like the mere presence of an XMP profile in the SPD could cause problems. Can someone clarify? Or is that merely a veiled warning that some SODIMMs marketed as 5600 might only get that speed if the host follows its XMP timings?
It shouldn’t cause problems, however there have been some cases where it did on DDR4 Framework laptops.
From Framework’s official knowledgebase regarding the Framework 13 with Intel CPUs: “While XMP memory should safely fall back to a slower speed, we have seen customer reports of some XMP memory modules from HyperX and other brands not booting, especially when used in Channel 0.”
I suspect that Framework is recommending against XMP/EXPO in general in case similar issues occur with DDR5.
Although with DDR5 I’ve noticed that a lot of higher frequency modules (ex. 5600 MT/s) have XMP profiles that aren’t any faster than the default speed. The reason for this is that older CPUs/motherboards didn’t support 5600 MT/s default speed so users with those parts could use XMP to still achieve full speed. I’ve seen this from several major brands so hopefully it won’t cause any issues.
