What is the best memory kit for use with AMD Ryzen 5 and ASUS B550?

Handy from Indonesia is trying to decide what is the best memory for his Ryzen 5 5600X and ASUS B550 system.

Question by Handy from Indonesia | Answered by in RAM on

Hi TweakTown, greetings from Indonesia! I have an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming, and now I am looking for RAM kits.

At the moment, I am considering between Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8GB 3200MHz C16 (CMK16GX4M2B3200C16) and G. Skill Trident Z Neo 2x8GB 3200MHz C16 (F4-3200C16D-16GTZN). These two are my strongest candidates after consulting the motherboard QVL list.

So, I need your help in choosing one of them considering these variables: a. Single or dual rank? b. Samsung vs. Micron vs. Hynix die? c. Frequency: 3200MHz or 3600MHz? d. Latency Cl 16 or Cl 18? e. Capacity: 16GB or 32GB? f. Brand reliability: Corsair or GSkill?

Hi Handy,

Thanks for the question! Your build is shaping up quite nicely, and I do commend you for actually taking the time to look over the motherboard QVL.

What is the best memory kit for use with AMD Ryzen 5 and ASUS B550? 1

On the subject of memory, both Corsair and GSkill make great products. I've personally used Corsair for the last ten years in every test system and haven't had any issues; while on the other side, I haven't had the opportunity to use GSkill in quite a while, but their Trident Z has a pretty good reputation.

Single v Dual Rank memory: I do not think it's going to matter in your day-to-day activities, there is possibly a slight performance bump due to interleaving, but again only one "rank" is refreshed in a cycle. With you going 2x8G, I doubt you find many kits that are dual-rank at that density, so it is a non-issue.

As far as memory vendors, Samsung will get you the best timings if you can find legit b-die memory, but I am almost sure it is not in production anymore. That said, Hynix and Microns product stacks have matured enough at this point in DDR4 life cycle that it's on par with everything else in the market.

With Ryzen, I like to keep the fabric at 1:1 at the quickest possible speed; for me, this is 3800MHz but not all CPUs like fabric higher than 1800MHz. The best bet is to find a 3600MHz kit of memory with the lowest timings and run fabric at 1800MHz, just like we did with Zen2+.

I hope this helps you choose your RAM for your build!

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