IT News on September 30th: Due to the continuous rise in memory prices, the enthusiasm in the DIY market has been severely dampened. However, some users have chosen to continue upgrading by mixing existing old hardware with new hardware, while others have opted to purchase second-hand hardware.

Some users, identified by Reddit, have reported encountering issues where the DDR5 memory modules from the old platform cannot be used in Intel Core Ultra 200S (Arrow Lake) platforms. These issues include the inability to power on the system and the system failing the POST self-check. A summary of related cases conducted yesterday indicated that the problem may be related to the DRAM chips used in some 8GB and 16GB DDR5 memory modules.

According to the Intel Core Ultra 200S data manual, the DDR5 supported Die densities are only three models: 16, 24, and 32 Gbit; the 8 Gbit core option is not listed; for non-ECC UDIMM configurations, they also start from 16 Gbit cores.

Therefore, the issue of the Core Ultra 200S platform not being able to boot with old memory has nothing to do with the capacity of the memory modules, but is related to how many DRAM chips are installed in each memory module and how these chips are organized.

For example, an 8GB memory module can be composed of 4 16-Gbit chips or 8 8-Gbit chips. Both configurations have the same capacity, but the latter is not within Intel's supported range.

Similarly, 16GB memory modules also face a similar situation. 16GB memory modules composed of 8 chips of each type Gbit and x8 are supported by Intel, whereas those made up of 16 chips of each type Gbit are not included in the official support list. For example, in the case mentioned above where the user was unable to boot their computer, chip models such as SK from Hynix, H-Die, and H8A were involved.

IT Home Reminder: Different batches of memory from the same brand or even the same product series may exhibit varying compatibility issues due to the use of different DRAM chips. Therefore, it is not possible to accurately determine whether a piece of memory belongs to an affected model based solely on the memory brand, product name, frequency, and capacity.

The memory models currently reported by users to have issues include KLEVV FIT V, V- COLOR XSKY, Patriot Venom, Patriot Elite, and some G. Skill Flare X5. However, this list is not complete, and different batches of the same model may use different types of memory chips. Therefore, it cannot be concluded that all products in that series are incompatible.

This issue is particularly noteworthy for users upgrading from older platforms such as Alder Lake and Raptor Lake to LGA1851. Memory that functioned normally on previous DDR5 systems may not be compatible with the Core Ultra 200S platform; even if the memory capacity, frequency, and other specifications seem to meet the requirements, it may still not be possible to boot the system due to differences in the configuration of DRAM chips.

Therefore, when selecting DDR5 memory modules for the Core Ultra 200S platform, in addition to capacity and frequency, it is also important to confirm the QVL (list of qualified suppliers) of the motherboard manufacturer, and to verify as much as possible the specific DRAM chips used in the memory modules and their arrangement. This is particularly important for users who plan to upgrade their LGA1851 platform with old DDR5 memory.