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Overclocking vs high clock speed RAM?

G

Geronemo3

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 20, 2011
Messages
64
Hi.
I just ordered the TridentZ RGB DDR4 32GB (16x2) clocked at 2400Mhz.

I will be using this with Ryzen 7 2700x and X470 motherboard.

Now my question is if I overclock the RAM 3000Mhz will the performance be same as buying 3200Mhz or 3000Mhz RAM?

or

Should I buy RAM with faster clock speed out of the box like 3200Mhz?


Thanks
 
Buy higher clock speed with lower CAS rating. Especially Samsung B-die RAM. For lower speed RAM's looser timings cause latency. Currently looking at Team Group 3600.
 
3400 with tight timings seems to be the sweet spot. If you can push the same timings faster, do it. Get some b-die
 
Geronemo3 said:
Hi.
I just ordered the TridentZ RGB DDR4 32GB (16x2) clocked at 2400Mhz.

I will be using this with Ryzen 7 2700x and X470 motherboard.

Now my question is if I overclock the RAM 3000Mhz will the performance be same as buying 3200Mhz or 3000Mhz RAM?

or

Should I buy RAM with faster clock speed out of the box like 3200Mhz?


Thanks
Click to expand...
Not always but it might not matter.
And sometimes you can get higher performance.

To overclock much higher than stock speed you normally need to raise the CAS timing delay and other timings.
The main clock speed increase will give a speed benefit and slowing down the timings will reduce it.
Changes between them are linked, this must be considered as well.
Quite a few parameters need to be handled in tandem and there are no guarantees.
In fact you have to be very careful choosing ram for particular boards because some wont even run at stock speed!

If you can raise the speed 600MHz to 3000MHz (a major 25% increase in your case) then this will result in the CAS timing activating 25% faster as well.
Many timing parameters now activate in a shorter time period.
You will very likely need to increase CAS (and other settings) to allow the memory to run at the new speed, if at all.
However, at default the timings may be looser than necessary to be sure the memory remains stable in more hostile setups so you might have a bit of leaway before needing to loosen them further.

Another element is voltage.
Very high speed ram runs at higher voltage as that is the only way to obtain highest speeds from those chips.
Which brings us onto different chips.
Some clock well, some need higher voltage, many need both. Depending on the chip and how hard you intend on pushing it depends on what you need to do.
But not all chips can handle high voltages so caution is needed as damage can be immediate.
When raising voltage temps need to be monitored because power use increases with the square of voltage increase.
You may need to blow a fan at your ram. I use a 120mm as a matter of course which also cools the motherboard chipset and CPU VRMs.

Before you start its a good idea to make sure it runs stable at its default speed and then find how tight you can make the timings (and how low voltage is stable) while running at this speed.
This alone will give you a performance boost.
Use well known memory stability test tools to be sure it is stable otherwise you risk corrupting your OS/drives.

This takes a long time so some quick boundary testing will speed things up.
ie boost the voltage to the max you are prepared to use and loosen timings quite a bit, work from there.
BUT be careful as too high voltage can cause damage or produce too much heat. Even if its not overheating it can still reduce stability. Look to see what pro clockers find works ok. Also look at other ram being sold that use the same chips in your ram, this is what I did. Note any cooling differences applied to the chips.
Find known ways to stabilise difficult memory overclocks and set those up. Remove them one by one later to see what you can get away with.
Sometimes there are parameters which are less stable when too high or too low which is unfortunate, you need to read up on those.
And voltage can cause damage if set too high (stressing this so you dont push your luck!).


The above is overkill for a basic overclock but you are pushing for a pretty high overclock so it might not be a simple project.
It can get more complex but generally you dont need to go that crazy.


My anecdote:
I bought Corsair LPX 3000 CL15 @ 1.35V and found it wasnt stable above 2500MHz. (CL = CAS Latency, a short way of saying CAS)
I changed motherboard and it was worse.
So I stepped up to a higher quality motherboard and it worked great so started the overclocking adventure.
I went for the max the ram can possibly do and managed 3733MHz CL17 at 1.44V.
Any higher and peculiar behaviour started occuring that didnt go away after reducing the speed/voltage. I had to wait some time for it to become stable suggesting something was getting too hot and needed time to cool, despite the extra cooling and nothing being even finger warm.
fyi


Look for memory overclocking guides as a starting point and consider what I wrote.
There are easier ways of presenting this information and digesting it, and more complete descriptions.
But this is my effort in the short time I have.
(I may edit a few things to make it less messy)
 
Last edited:
you will likely be able to oc that set to about pc3000-3200 speeds at Cas16-18-18-45 timings. I had a kit that would do that. At least on intel system. May take quite a bit of tweaking tho.
 
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