Computer Freezing and RAM Bottleneck questions

[Ian827]

I have two questions:

First, my computer freezes for a couple seconds every so often. It seems to happen at random times, but it always happens when i'm running programs on my ssd. If i'm playing a game on my hard drive, it never freezes but if I an doing something on my ssd like watching youtube on chrome it freezes. This leads me to believe its a problem with my ssd. I am unsure if there is a fix for this.

My second question pertains to my RAM. For reference, I have a i7 8700 and a gtx1070. When playing most games, I am using 30-40% of my cpu and gpu and 85-90% of my RAM. I only have 1 stick of 8gb so does this mean if I get more RAM I would have better performance in games? If so, I am unsure what speed I should get. My motherboard is the HP Tampa2. https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05811928 When looking at the specs, I see "Supports PC4-19200 (DDR4-2400)". Does this mean my motherboard only supports RAM with 2400mhz? My current RAM is the SK Hynix HMA81GU6CJR8N-VK. When i google this RAM, I see that the speed is 2666mhz, which doesn't make sense if my motherboard only supports 2400mhz. I downloaded PC monitoring software to check the speed of my RAM and it is currently only at 1333mhz. I'm not sure if RAM is supposed to run at half the max speed. Now I want to buy more RAM but I am unsure what do buy.

I know I have a lot of questions here and any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I can't help you with the first question.   Could be a buggy SSD.  Could even be the memory chip is buggy.

Your second question...

You should buy PC4-2666 MHz memory because the i7-8700 can run the memory at that speed.

2400 MHz memory would slow down the PC.

When you run those memory reports, they always report half the rated speed.

You have to double the report...1333 x 2 = 2666 MHz.

Below is the link to the Crucial memory/SSD report for your PC.  They offer compatible memory for sale.

https://www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/hp---compaq/omen-880-160se-cto

Stick with the 2666 Mhz memory because anything faster will just downclock to 2666 Mhz.

[Ian827]

Why does my motherboard say it supports DDR4 19200 2400mhz if my RAM is faster than that? Also what does the 19200 mean because I only see that for RAM with 2400mhz speed. RAM with 2666mhz that I see have PC4 21300 or 21333.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Can't answer that.

All I can say is your PC has 2600 MHz memory running at 2600 MHz.

Specs on the intel processor your PC has...it uses and runs on 2600 Mhz.

Memory Types DDR4-2666

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/126686/intel-core-i7-8700-processor-12m-cache-u...