So, I’ve got my Framework AMD 13" laptop, but am starting to realise that I should’ve gone for more RAM.
I’ve bought the laptop with 1 stick of 16GB DDR5 RAM, but am now thinking I should populate the second slot, as some of the games I want to play are seriously eating RAM, especially as memory is shared between system memory and the GPU - which I forgot about.
So the question I have, if I buy another single 16GB DDR5 5600 SO-DIMM memory module on Amazon, such as a Crucial one, will there be any issues with different timings on the various modules? I was checking the BIOS, but I couldn’t find any information on the AMD EXPO profile of the Framework memory stick. Is there any information on that anywhere?
The main reason for not simply buying another stick on the Framework store is the time it would take to ship. With the holidays days away, I was really hoping to game a bit over the weekend, so wanted to source something locally.
In general, you want each pair of memory modules to be as closely matched as possible. Operation may be less reliable if they are not.
The Framework modules are made for them by ADATA and contain SK Hynix RAM chips. If you can’t get the Framework module in a timely manner, the next best thing would be an ADATA module. Unfortunately, those also don’t seem to be widely available.
After that, you could try any DDR5-5600 CL46 module. It will probably work, but fewer guarantees than if you bought another one from Framework.
Framework is not using an EXPO profile on its RAM. They’re being run on their standard JEDEC DDR5-5600 profile. Alas, I’m not in the same places as my AMD Framework right now so I can’t get those numbers for you.
I can’t speak from experience on the FW platform specifically, but every other time I’ve tried mixing modules in a build I’ve encountered problems. IMO it’s not worth the hassle, just grab the FW DIMM.
This is my first DDR5 computer so weird perhaps off-topic question: is that normal? I’m used to DDR4 where XMP is a significantly higher number, not to mentioned being the number actually advertised as opposed to the JEDEC numbers, and seem like an absolute requirement to have enabled. Now that you mention it I didn’t see anywhere to tweak that in the BIOS either?
At least a crucial 4800 16gb stick worked fine with a kingston 5600 32gb one (I only did that to test if memory frequency had an impact on idle power, it doesn’t).