Corsair Vengeance RGB Ram not working with motherboard

Hello everyone,

I have an MSI B350m gaming pro motherboard with the ryzen 7 2700 and I purchased the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 2x8gb 2666mhz Ram to replace my old ram that I had. My old ram has the same specs as the Corsair ram I purchased; DDR4, 2x8gb, 2666mhz. The Corsair ram worked for a day and then my games started crashing and I was getting memory errors. My bios, drivers, and chip sets are all up to date. I ran the windows 10 memory test and it came back with hardware errors. I put my old ram back in and everything has been fine. I don’t know it the Corsair ram is not compatible with my motherboard but I figured it would be since all the specs match up and the 3000 MHz and 3200 mhz versions are on the compatibility list, but I guess the 2666 MHz version I purchased is not.

I’m just wondering if I need to try and return this ram and get the 3200 MHz version or am I doing something wrong? I’m really new to computers and adding my own parts, this is my first time doing it so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some recommendations...

Lookup and get familiar with the memory specifications for your board, processor, and memory. Keep in mind any configuration considered an overclock in any category (motherboard, processor, or memory) your success may vary.

Learn about memtest86 and how to create a bootable USB stick and how to run this software.

Get familiar with your BIOS/UEFI and how to determine your firmware version and configure your memory settings for your board. To start configure any automatic memory settings for your board and how to set or unset XMP settings in particular.

It will help if you can determine if you actually have a bad memory stick since a bad memory stick will waste any time you put to troubleshooting as well as potentially trashing your OS in the process.

Find out what memory slots are your primaries. If your board supports single channel memory configuration then start with only 1 ram stick in the primary memory slot and test each memory stick (run memtest86) one at a time to ensure they are not having errors.

When doing this be sure your are configured and running your motherboard, CPU and memory withing official specifications (not overclocked). You may need to reset your BIOS/UEFI memory settings and turn off XMP to ensure you are running in specifications. The assumption is that that if you are running in spec and your ram modules are physically not bad your memory tests should not fail. If they do fail then you *may* have a bad memory stick.

Since you have another pair of memory sticks to compare against as a base line (known to be stable) you can also test that memory to rule out any problems with your existing motherboard and CPU.

Keep in mind memory test errors can be produced due to bad memory stick but also because of incorrect (or unstable) memory settings for your mb-cpu-ram configuration.

Generally mixing and matching parts of low and high quality won't give you optimal compatibly. I can't necessarily speak to the quality of MSI boards but based on the general price point of that board you may have to accept some limitations such as running your memory speeds below 2666. Your CPU may be able to drive a high memory clock but the board may not like it or it may do so with an unacceptable error rate.

Welcome to the world of building your own. It can be as fun as it is frustrating.

Just FYI, I was taking a peek at your motherboard manual and came across a particular warning that I have never seen before.

Based on processor specification, the Memory DIMM voltage below 1.35V is

suggested to protect the processor.

I don't know if this is just an MSI thing but something to keep in mind if you are considering another memory kit, especially a higher frequency one, as many higher frequency kits require 1.35v.

A Computer Guy,

Thank you for taking the time to look into this and giving me some things to try. I’ll look into everything you posted when I have time, I’ve been swamped with work the last few days. I’ll run memtest and read more about the cpu, ram, motherboard specs then make a post with the results.