RAM for locked i5

NienorGT · February 1, 2019

TL/DR; If a locked i5 and B360/H370 board limit you to DDR4 2666MHz, can you still play with timings and even make it faster than rated and does it even matter in real world performance?

Hey guys,

I used to buy the ram at the fastest speed and at the lowest CAS timings, but... back then all CPUs were unlocked and the fastest RAM was still a speed supported out of the box by the CPU (I'm a first gen i5 hold up...).

But today due to Intel's Overclock Tax it's not always worth it to buy K/Z parts since there's a step price change for the K CPUs and a cheap Z board have less features than B/H boards at the same price level (and they may have a worst VRM which is one of the most important factor for overclocking).

And correct me if I'm wrong but if I buy a B360/H370, I'm stuck at 2666MHz and that's it for the speed, but what about the CAS and other timings?

Because the price itself is quite different, a stick at CAS15 will cost more than one at CAS19 (those numbers seems to be the lowest and highest I saw) but will it really matter in real life scenario for someone who's not overclocking?

But I also remember that if you were to have a slower RAM than what they were rated due to your FSBxMULTIPLIER ratio, you could crank up the timings higher than rated. Is that still works with today's "locked" platforms or you have to use timings set in the memory itself?

Because I feel kind of cheated when I see sales only on faster memory but making me pay more for a slower memory of the same brand/series... Here an example:

_{I still remember my old boss being adamant on his DDR2 800MHz 4-4-4-12 with gold heat spreader and *gasp* Samsung chips! (sorry, he kept repeating the same thing at every client and it's still burned in my memory )}

Fasauceome · February 1, 2019

14 minutes ago, NienorGT said:

I buy a B360/H370, I'm stuck at 2666MHz

Nah, Intel officially supports only up to that but you can do better because ram speeds are basically all out of spec for any given CPU and most motherboards. Intel isn't so picky on ram speeds though, and an i5 on an H series board won't have an enormous difference between something like 2666 and 3200, so a fire and forget XMP profile on budget DDR4 will do nicely.