ran my RAM at stock speeds for 2 years without knowing, enabled EXPO and im a little embarrassed

Posted by Awkward-Object-3607@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 61 comments

back in 2024 i built my rig with a Ryzen 7 7700X and grabbed 32gb of G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5 6000. went into BIOS after installing windows, set everything up and thought i was good to go

fast forward to last week, my friend was over and we were playing Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred and he just casually goes "yo is EXPO even on?" and i was like yeah obviously. checked and it was sitting at 4800mhz the entire time. two years. two whole years

enabled EXPO, rebooted, ran some benchmarks and the 1% lows actually improved a decent amount. not even placebo its right there in the numbers

so yeah if youre on a new AMD build and never touched your BIOS after installing windows please just go check. dont be me. i had extra money specifically to go overkill on the RAM and it was just sitting there doing nothing the whole time lol

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MistSecurity@reddit

Don’t worry.

I got a new monitor back when 144hz was the hotness.

I talked SO much about how clear it was, how smooth, etc.

A few years later, I see [a longer version of this GreekGodX clip](https://youtu.be/gQDQGmB58WQ?si=D9VtNjVSt8PlR4VU), and am laughing my ass off with my friends who are hanging out.

I then go into my own display settings. It’s set to 60hz. Has been for the entire time I owned the monitor at that point.

So, don’t feel bad.

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DestroyerCHC@reddit

I did this exact thing for 8 years...

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PiotrekDG@reddit

For me, 60 Hz vs. 120 Hz is immediately obvious as soon as I move the mouse. 120 Hz vs. 240 Hz is still distinguishable, but not that "subconsciously".

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Lil_Hater112@reddit

You definitely cooked if you can’t tel 60 hz from 144

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Think-Abroad-5092@reddit

This. Was on 60Hz for threeish years on a 1440p monitor rocking a 4070, then 9070xt. When I set it to its max boy did I feel so stupid but damn do games feel so food now

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PsyOmega@reddit

I then go into my own display settings. It’s set to 60hz.

Maybe. You could have had it at 144. Windows likes to revert that setting to 60 kind of randomly.

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sob727@reddit

Haha nice

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taenorobinson@reddit

same here

iszoloscope@reddit

When I bought my first SSD (OCZ Vertex II 60GB lol), I connected it to a sata-300 port (or even a 150?). I only noticed when I did my next upgrade and opened up my PC, so that could also easily have been 2 years or something as well...

Though, in that period I only had like 1 or 2 sata-600 port(s) on my mobo. So yeah, these 'little' mistakes happen and you'll learn from it and you won't forget it ever again! ;)

creatron@reddit

Good luck! I have a Ryzen 5 7600X with G.SKILL Flare X5 Series DDR5 RAM 32GB and I can only run at 5600 stable. If I go to default 6000 my PC fails to boot at all and I have to flash BIOS to get it back to booting.

No-Department9717@reddit

it happened to me too lol until i realize i have to wait for like 5 min before it actually boot. But the diff of 5600 to 6000 is minimal and the cost of longer boot times is not worth it imo.

Yeah unfortunately that didn't work for me. Left it to boot overnight and never went past that. But like you said, difference between 5600 and 6000 isn't even noticeable for my use cases (mainly gaming nowadays)

rav-age@reddit

so a free upgrade!

mondaysmyday@reddit

Honestly? It's not worth it? I mean stock speeds are just fine too. You might gain 1-5 FPS but I doubt that improves quality of life much

IrishWeebster@reddit

... if... if I have a friend who built, like... a $5,000-ish computer... and they weren't sure if they turned on EXPO (or the AMD variant)... where should I send that friend to figure out if they have, or how to uh... how to do that?

Destructo-Bear@reddit

Just tell them to pay me fifty dollars and I'll tell them

Bonbonfrosch@reddit

Max I can do is three fiddy

TransientEons@reddit

Your friend should check that in the BIOS. And EXPO is the AMD variant, with Intel's RAM OC settings typically being called XMP. Though they're more or less the same concept with some minor differences to optimize for one manufacturer or the other.

Thanks dude! I'll tell... him.

koboman2000@reddit

Update us later… when he tells you it it worked…

timegiver3@reddit

In Task Manager you can check if the RAM is running at the advertised speed. You’ll have to go into BIOS to turn it on or off.

Thanks dude!

MountainDoit@reddit

If it crashes after you change don’t panic, sometimes the profile isn’t quite right and you just need to fiddle with the timings a bit. Nothing’s broken, it just restarts if it doesn’t like the timing

SupposablyAtTheZoo@reddit

I honestly don't experience any difference in ram speeds auto or expo so I leave it at auto as well.

android_windows@reddit

I kept having stability issues so I had to go back to 4800MT/s. With RAM prices where they're at now, I'm afraid of causing damage overclocking it. Its kind of frustrating that DDR5 can't just run at its rated speed out of the box like previous generations of RAM could.

chsn2000@reddit

Changing the timings can't do damage to it. Running high voltages can in theory, but you shouldn't really need to increase the voltage for a RAM OC.

nokei@reddit

I kind of had the reverse last gen I had to keep my ram stock this gen it's been fine.

bringbackcayde7@reddit

you can also do PBO and get some free performance from your cpu

manohar_18@reddit

The amount of people running expensive DDR5 kits at JEDEC speeds without realizing it is probably way higher than anyone wants to admit lol

At least you caught it eventually. I’ve seen people upgrade CPUs, coolers, even entire GPUs chasing better performance while their RAM profile was never enabled.

Also 6000 CL30/CL32 is basically the sweet spot for Ryzen 7000 anyway, so your setup was sitting there handcuffed the whole time.

The funniest part is BIOS settings always make you feel like you’re about to accidentally launch a missile, so most people enable nothing and leave immediately.

justalurker56@reddit

I built my computer in 2023 with 32gbs ddr5 7600. It was only about 6 months ago I realized I'd been running at 4800 as well 😅

formosan1986@reddit

Great job fam, are you ready for the next step? Now let’s try to plug in your monitor into the graphics card and not your motherboard.

Dryzzzle@reddit

Had you ever updated your bios the last two years?

FTAStyling@reddit

Unless you are experiencing problems or there is a known common issue like the 13th/14th gen Intel there really is not much of a reason most people need to perform a bios update.

No, but if they had for some reason- then it would have taken Expo off. So maybe they did enable it properly at the time- was at least trying to make them feel not as bad about it.

Fluffysquishia@reddit

thanks for this reminder

No worries!

Oh gotcha, yeah I’ve accidentally hit the bios reset button while moving pcs before. I always set fan curves when I finish a build so it’s obvious when it happens because the fans take off like a fighter jet on boot lol

ATangK@reddit

When I built my pc I connected the reset button to bios reset pins so I could play with overclocking.

I accidentally hit it sometimes and it resets everything 😅😅😅

allofdarknessin1@reddit

Not op but I thought I enabled mine last year, and it was off when I checked recently. Good to know that's why.

Glad I could help one person, at least!

Jaybonaut@reddit

Spectre and other CPU vulnerabilities etc.

GreenWorld8549@reddit

x3d chips need bios updates

AlfaPro1337@reddit

How to void the cpu warranty.

bucketbot91@reddit

So I know people are going to downvote this for claiming it's AI, but everything about this user and post reek of AI / advertising. The user's post history is seemingly normal, but his prose and style of speaking change so much. They also alternate back and forth between using pounds and dollars as currency. They also more than once in their comment history specifically talk about enabling overclocking ram in the BIOS previously. To top it all off, they mention here having a 7700x, but in different comments they mention having a 5800x3d. Why would they downgrade for gaming performance?

What this really feels like is an advertisement for the Diablo 4 expansion. Notice how his writing style is a bit sloppy, but "Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred" is just perfectly capitalized. It just feels off. Also, assuming everything else with his PC is stable, which lets be honest, the memory running at stock speeds absolutely would be, his friend would likely not be able to discern that EXPO wasn't enabled. The perceived difference would not be that noticeable unless they had both an FPS and frame-time graph on screen.

stonecats@reddit

yeah, i also went a few months till i upgraded my mobo's fw,
and noticed my expo speed boost was not fully enabled.

Ryan32501@reddit

4800 to 6000 is a decent jump, but not as much as my friend a few years back on AM4-DDR4. He was running 2133mhz on 3600 sticks. That's like an 80% increase in ram speed 🤣

Blue-150@reddit

Most of my pc knowledge comes from something I screwed up or something I was terrified I would screw up leading to excessive research. It's a good lesson, fail forward or move nowhere at all

Positive-Road3903@reddit

bro just enabled his quasi 'X3D'

c0rruptioN@reddit

Nothing to be ashamed of, I pulled a similiar move. Built an AM4 system for myself several years ago and didn't know that Asus has XMP buried/baked into a setting called DOCP. I just assumed it was on already.

Well, needless to say, I am now running full speed with my ram in 2026.

albinoking80@reddit

Should be the default..

SEE_RED@reddit

Also check after a bios update too!

For some reason my pc acts weird if i enable expo. i have a ryzen 7700 with 32gb of Kingston FURY Beast 6000. boot time take forever like few minutes. After bunch of researching, seems like my mb model (MSI b650m-A pro wifi ) paired with these rams can cause issues if EXPO d. You can tweak other things to make the boot time faster like memory context restore but turning that on makes my pc unstable like bsod, random restarts, crashes etc. After that i just kept it at 4800 and never touched it again. Also rn im afraid to do anything, fearing if i damage my ram in any way in this crisis lol

Crazy-Newspaper-8523@reddit

What to do if enabling it crashes my games

SirDarkStar@reddit

Free upgrade

Ortaco16@reddit

I pray you have are able to enjoy your new speeds 🙏🏽. I have been having dc issues with my ethernet port and it turns out turning EXPO made my pc unstable when gaming

Wyrade@reddit

Bios updates usually disable EXPO/XMP, if you ever did that and didn't change it afterwards.

Shiny_Whisper_321@reddit

I got the reference memory for my MB and turning on EXPO causes instability. Grumbles.

Responsible_Bat_6002@reddit

Nah man, slow ram doesn't mean anything...I know, a redditor informed me of it.

Altruistic-Resort-56@reddit

Computers are a lot like cars. Most people are totally unaware of what they are capable of and wouldn't know it if they saw it

Don't feel bad, it's just a tool you use. If it does what you want that's the whole point

Kind of same until recently except I did it by choice. I didn't enable it because some outlets at the time made it sound like you'd be giving up some stability for negligible performance gaming. I do notice some better performance in VRChat though, which is CPU heavy and probably single threaded heavy as well. In other games I haven't noticed much of a difference but for me with a 7800x3d and a 4090 I was already getting really good performance.

epicyodude@reddit

You just unlocked the next level. Let’s go