ragdollcatman
New member
KK, so I've been toying with the idea of Overclocking my Processor for a while so that I could plop faster RAM into my system. My specs are:
i7 3770k
Corsair Hydro H100i + 4 Akasa Apache Camo fans (the brown ones)
Asus P8Z77-V Premium
16GB Corsair Vengeance Jet Black (the spiky heatsink ones) 8-8-8-24 4x4GB
250GB Samsung 840 Evo
2 x 3TB Seagates in RAID-1
1TB Seagate
32GB Liteon mSata (can't be bothered to replace with bigger)
XFX 7990
Corsair HX750
Coolermaster HAF 932 + 1 200(230?) mm Bitfenix Spectre Pro blue, 5 120mm Coolermaster Sickleflow Blue (side and base) and a 140mm Spectre Pro blue at rear (loads of airflow in and out as the 7990 seems to get pretty warm quite quickly)
Now, I set the turbo core ratio to 40 to make the processor run at 4GHz (was the easiest way I was told to do it - I have no idea how to properly overclock the chip to just run at whatever speed I like). The CPU can get up to 4.4 GHz with BIOS sorting the voltage. After that, I can't make it run without crashing as I have no idea what to enter for voltages to make it work properly (tried entering 1.2 and 1.25v still crashed)
Anyway, so my question about RAM.
I have, as stated above, Corsair Vengeance 1600, which is 1.5v CL 8, which I was told can run at 7-8-7-24 and it is as I did that this morning and MEMTEST reported no faults.
I decided I wanted to try out some 2400 RAM. I know you don't get much improvement over 1600 (if any) for gaming purposes but I wanted to try it out anyway.
I ordered some Team Group Xtreem Frostbite CL10 RAM (2 packs for 16GB). Both packs work fine on my motherboard.
The questions I have are these:
1) MEMTEST reports that the 1600 RAM was 20175 MB/s and the 2400 RAM was 23097 MB/s - with slightly lower values on the CPU cache (L1 99557 down to 99438, L2 53531 down to 53313, L3 35803 down to 33682)
And as I've tightened the timings the 1600 RAM is now reporting just over 20200 Mb/s
Is this all the improvement I will see overall? Is 2922 MB/s more bandwidth good, even at the expense of the CPU cache speed? The computer did, overall, feel a bit snappier with the new RAM (had already put the chip to 4 GHz with the 1600 RAM)
And
2) I've been reading page after page about 1.65v RAM with Ivy Bridge chips being a no-go area.
Now, from what I have read it isn't just a case of the extra voltage going through the chip but the temperature it generates that can cause the chip to burn out.
If the chip is kept cool enough will this extra voltage still be a problem or is it literally down to Intel's memory controller only taking 1.5v RAM tops.
The Team Group RAM according to BIOS is using 1.675v so just over the 1.65v limit (but only by a tiny bit)
I'm not experienced enough with overclocking or using RAM above the specification of the chip (always used whatever the fastest native supported RAM was for any board and chip)
So any help on this, I'd appreciate it, as most of you are much more knowledgeable about it than I.
i7 3770k
Corsair Hydro H100i + 4 Akasa Apache Camo fans (the brown ones)
Asus P8Z77-V Premium
16GB Corsair Vengeance Jet Black (the spiky heatsink ones) 8-8-8-24 4x4GB
250GB Samsung 840 Evo
2 x 3TB Seagates in RAID-1
1TB Seagate
32GB Liteon mSata (can't be bothered to replace with bigger)
XFX 7990
Corsair HX750
Coolermaster HAF 932 + 1 200(230?) mm Bitfenix Spectre Pro blue, 5 120mm Coolermaster Sickleflow Blue (side and base) and a 140mm Spectre Pro blue at rear (loads of airflow in and out as the 7990 seems to get pretty warm quite quickly)
Now, I set the turbo core ratio to 40 to make the processor run at 4GHz (was the easiest way I was told to do it - I have no idea how to properly overclock the chip to just run at whatever speed I like). The CPU can get up to 4.4 GHz with BIOS sorting the voltage. After that, I can't make it run without crashing as I have no idea what to enter for voltages to make it work properly (tried entering 1.2 and 1.25v still crashed)
Anyway, so my question about RAM.
I have, as stated above, Corsair Vengeance 1600, which is 1.5v CL 8, which I was told can run at 7-8-7-24 and it is as I did that this morning and MEMTEST reported no faults.
I decided I wanted to try out some 2400 RAM. I know you don't get much improvement over 1600 (if any) for gaming purposes but I wanted to try it out anyway.
I ordered some Team Group Xtreem Frostbite CL10 RAM (2 packs for 16GB). Both packs work fine on my motherboard.
The questions I have are these:
1) MEMTEST reports that the 1600 RAM was 20175 MB/s and the 2400 RAM was 23097 MB/s - with slightly lower values on the CPU cache (L1 99557 down to 99438, L2 53531 down to 53313, L3 35803 down to 33682)
And as I've tightened the timings the 1600 RAM is now reporting just over 20200 Mb/s
Is this all the improvement I will see overall? Is 2922 MB/s more bandwidth good, even at the expense of the CPU cache speed? The computer did, overall, feel a bit snappier with the new RAM (had already put the chip to 4 GHz with the 1600 RAM)
And
2) I've been reading page after page about 1.65v RAM with Ivy Bridge chips being a no-go area.
Now, from what I have read it isn't just a case of the extra voltage going through the chip but the temperature it generates that can cause the chip to burn out.
If the chip is kept cool enough will this extra voltage still be a problem or is it literally down to Intel's memory controller only taking 1.5v RAM tops.
The Team Group RAM according to BIOS is using 1.675v so just over the 1.65v limit (but only by a tiny bit)
I'm not experienced enough with overclocking or using RAM above the specification of the chip (always used whatever the fastest native supported RAM was for any board and chip)
So any help on this, I'd appreciate it, as most of you are much more knowledgeable about it than I.
