No. Running RAM slower than the rated max speed will not cause issues. If you were running your RAM faster than your motherboard supports, then that could cause memory read errors that could cause CTDs or even whole-machine lockups, but you’d have had to have set that speed manually in your BIOS.
Install CPU-Z (it’s free) and post screenshots of the CPU, mainboard, memory and SPD tabs here, and we can see what’s going on.
The manufacturer only listed the speed in MHz for marketing reasons - it simply looks better. 6000 MT/s (3000MHz) is the correct way to describe your RAM speed, and it’s exactly what you should expect.
As for Windows showing 4800 MHz in CMD - that’s completely normal. 4800 is the default (base) JEDEC speed of your RAM. The advertised 6000 MT/s is reached after enabling XMP (Intel) or EXPO (AMD) profile in the BIOS.
Everything is fine with your RAM - just make sure your XMP/EXPO profile is turned on in BIOS and you’ll be running at the full rated speed.
EDIT
For simplicity, I wrote “RAM speed” without separating the actual clock frequency from the data transfer rate. Some memory manufacturers do the same - they list the speed in MHz because that’s what most people are used to seeing. This can be confusing for those who are new to PC or have only recently built their PCs.
Bruh then idk what else is causing the black screens
Yes, it is enabled. But just because your motherboard will read the EXPO profile and let you activate it doesn’t mean that that RAM will run reliably at that speed in that board. I’ll defer to @TenPatrol whose knowledge I think exceeds mine here, but I’ve definitely experienced crashes due to running RAM at the XMP (which is EXPO for Intel) profile settings on a board that doesn’t have that RAM on its QVL at the XMP speed. In my case this was because I put in 4 DIMMs, and the board couldn’t handle full speed on more than 2 DIMMs, but the effect was the same - it all looked fine until the machine was under stress running the sim and then mid-flight a memory read would go bad and a CTD would result.
Your RAM might be 100% fine at the EXPO speed in your board. But it might not. The whole purpose of the QVL is to tell you that a particular RAM / motherboard / CPU combo has been tested at a given speed and shown to work, and if your combo is not on it then it’s not guaranteed to do so.
@TenPatrol points out that 4800 MT/s (and not MHz despite what your BIOS is saying) is the standard speed of this RAM before an EXPO profile is applied. If it were me, I’d disable the EXPO profile and run the RAM at this speed for a period of time and see if you have further crashes. If you do, you know RAM speed isn’t the issue; if you don’t, then it could be the root of your problem.
Memtest86 might also be useful here - you can run a battery of tests on your RAM at stock and EXPO speeds and see if you get any errors. If you do, that’s going to be a problem.
If RAM is not the issue then we’re back to square one, unfortunately, but my personal experience is that RAM problems can cause CTDs with MSFS.
I’ve mentioned many times that using 4 memory sticks isn’t a good idea if they aren’t purchased as an x4 kit. Even having 4 identical sticks bought as two separate 2x2 kits may not allow full-speed operation - you often have to lower the speed significantly to keep the system stable and avoid CTDs. The motherboard manual should clearly indicate which memory modules can work as an x4 kit, for example
AMD motherboard
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MPG-X870E-CARBON-WIFI/support#mem
Some RAM will work perfectly as a 2-stick kit but may not work well as a 4-stick kit
Also, not all RAM are compatible with every CPU and motherboard.
@FlyerOneZero
I experienced this myself - I added identical modules to my existing 2x16 GB 7200 sticks to reach 64 GB total. 2x16 GB sticks worked perfectly fine on their own, but the problem appeared when I tried running 4x16 GB.
After extensive testing, I couldn’t stabilize them at 7200. In the end, I sold those and bought a 2x32 GB kit.
Yeah, similar for me - I had 2x16 and added another 2x16 of the same module and made a bad assumption. Eventually I figured it out and consulted the QVL and dropped the speed to 4800 which was what it could handle.
I’m using those same DIMMs in my desktop now because I had them on hand since I rebuilt the PC they were in (my new sim rig has 2x32 at 6400), and they only run at 3600 on this board because they are XMP modules and this is an AMD rig. Not a problem for the work I’m doing on this machine and if it ever is, I’ll get 2x32 to replace them.
My concern was really that @ItzChickenYall’s Asus board doesn’t have his specific modules on the QVL, but he’s loaded the EXPO profile and is running them at 6000 anyway, and so he might be getting read or write failures that are causing his CTDs and I thought it was worth investigating that before looking at other causes.
That said, two matched DIMMs, even if not on the QVL, should be able to run at full-tilt on a current board. Certainly 6000 should not be out of range. But until you test, you can’t be sure.
been more than a week and i had been using the fix. it was working since then i did many many flights it was all perfect. however just now was doing a turnaround flight on the Asobo ATR 72 and then had a black screen. i dont know what to do
I did notice this suspicious error log in event viewer. its the only error that occured at the time of the crash.
Faulting application name: LogiOptionsMgr.exe, version: 10.10.58.0, time stamp: 0x649593b0
Faulting module name: AMDXN64.DLL, version: 32.0.22021.1009, time stamp: 0x68ed2bbf
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x0000000000dc0a45`Faulting process id: 0x59D8
Faulting application start time: 0x1DC5049954FFA27
Faulting application path: C:\ProgramData\Logishrd\LogiOptions\Software\Current\LogiOptionsMgr.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\u0420422.inf_amd64_cb23ea54e356fea3\B420106\AMDXN64.DLL
Report Id: 4ac2ae23-357b-478d-98fd-d5e93d8c3df0
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
wondering if it could be related to Logitech Options causing CTD - #2 by hobanagerik
i have since uninstalled logitech options. ill see how it goes from here
Hi all hope you are well. I have never had this before but my last two flights its done the same at almost the exact place in the flight. All monitors go black and cant ctrl alt del or anything. Can still hear sound. Did anyone find a solution at all since the post ? Cant see anything online so far.
Since ive uninstalled logi options i never had the issue again. Did u check to see if there was another application mentioned right around the time of ctd in Event viewer?
So, I’ve sort-of had this again recently, but not quite 100% the same. I was flying in a group last night when all my video froze on all screens (I have 6 in the sim setup), and my Twitch audio also stopped, but I could still hear the sim audio (and not on a simple loop). Windows did not respond to any inputs (keyboard, mouse, touch). This carried on for a few minutes. Then my screens all went either black, or white (which seems to be the default for two of my screens).
A minute or two later, though, one of my screens came back, and then mouse and keyboard input came back, but not the other screens. All of the content that had been on the other 5 screens had moved onto that single screen. Eventually, I was able to surface a dialog box from the sim saying my graphics device had crashed, and once I dimissed this, and the sim exited, all my other screens came back. Windows was still unstable so I rebooted and was fine after that.
It’s worth noting that Zoom, which was running at the time, continued to run without issues. I couldn’t interact with it since no inputs were working, but I could continue to talk to the other person on the call without issue, and that was the case right until I rebooted the machine. So programs are clearly still running, you just can’t see any displays or make any inputs.
I’ve had this happen a couple of other times in the past several months, too. It’s not common, and in all these cases it’s been down to a graphics driver crash. The symptoms are not quite the same as the original ones I had on my old system, which were down to a network driver crash, but the common theme here is that it’s due to a crash in a Windows driver. The important thing to note is that it’s not a sim issue per-se; it’s just that the sim puts enough load on your system to provoke the driver crash. You might see it playing other games or doing other activities.
The answer is to identify the faulting driver and update it, if there’s an update. This can fix the issue. I posted about how to do this up-thread, but this only works if the crash proceeds to a Windows BSOD and you have to leave it to happen, which can take a while. Then you can examine the minidump file.
There’s no silver bullet solution to this one because it’s all dependent on which driver is crashing and why.
Could this possibly be related to the MS servers? The last 2 days I’ve had the video freeze/audio continue issue on 3 different flights. Today it happened again and this time the screens went black. It happens randomly…It can be 5 minutes into the flight, or an hour into the flight. I can sometimes go for a couple of months without any issues, then out of the blue it will happen on every flight. I haven’t made any changes to hardware- (5600X/7700XT/64 GB ram). On the software side I run SPADnxt, BATC, and Track IR. As far as I can tell, all my drivers are up to date. I used to have it happen on FS2020 as well, but not nearly as often as now.
I don’t see how.
When this has happened to you, does it ever resolve, or do you reboot the machine? My suggestion is to leave it as long as you can and see if it recovers at all. Yesterday, for example, I was able to determine that it was a graphics driver crash. MSFS will tell you about that, if you get a display back to see the message and input back to click ‘OK’ on the dialog.
Now, graphics driver crashes could be down to sim issues, since DX12 is notoriously unprotected compared to DX11 and it’s much easier to break it.
Also - if you use your motherboard update utlity to keep drivers up to date, be aware that they often are quite some way behind the latest drivers available from your actual device makers. Chipset drivers, NIC drivers etc are usually most current downloaded directly from Intel, AMD etc.
I have to Ctrl+Alt+Delete to close up the sim and the other programs I run. I’ll try again tomorrow and just wait it out to see what happens. I do get an error message from the Radeon software everytime it happens. I can’t remember the exact error, but I’ll post it tomorrow when I fly again. I had this same random issue last year when I was running a 5700XT graphics card. At that time I thought a more modern card would solve the problem. Evidently not. 
I appreciate your input on this issue!
Hmm. Well, if CTRL+ALT+DEL works, then keyboard input is still working, which, in my case at least, it isn’t; at least, not when the crash happens.
It seems like there are a bunch of connected scenarios where something like this happens, but they aren’t all one thing, and they don’t all go the same. So there’s no one solution.
It’s very annoying!
