First attempt at XMP

[Winter_German]

So today I decided to try using my RAM to its full potential, as I've let it run at 2400 MHz for almost a year now, despite the fact it's 3000 MHz (Team T-Force Delta RGB).  I jumped into BIOS (CLICK BIOS 5 on MSI Z370 A-PRO) and enabled XMP, then went back into Windows.  Everything looked good at first, with my RAM running around 3000 MHz at 1.36 V (only 0.01 V above the voltage it has listed on PCPartPicker).  I then clicked on the full voltage list button by accident, but noticed some values were in red.  Looking close it was my CPU IO and CPU SA voltages.  They were between 0.15 and 0.20 V above the safe level, and quite higher than default.  I set them to default and went back into BIOS to check if there was anywhere to set these lower on startup, and I couldn't find anything.  Once back into Windows they were high again, so I returned to BIOS and disabled XMP.  When I started up again, the voltages were back to default.  The only thing I can think of that might cause this (but I'm unsure because I don't know if it has impact on XMP), is that I haven't updated my BIOS in a long while.

 

I really don't want to set my voltages every time I boot up because I'm scared I'll forget about it and wear down my motherboard.  Any help or tips would be appreciated.

[faziten]

In some cases XMP profiles will force extra voltage across the board, on my old z77 it would even force the CPU to it's maximum freq all the time.

 

Try rising your ram to it's rated speed and timings manually. It should work.

[Winter_German]

23 hours ago, faziten said:

Try rising your ram to it's rated speed and timings manually. It should work.

I've been looking around for some time now and can't find any way to change the speed manually.  I'm pretty sure I can tweak the timings but I haven't seen anything for speed.  Any specific spot I should looking?  I feel like it's in BIOS but I didn't see much there other than the XMP button.

[faziten]

23 minutes ago, Winter_German said:

I've been looking around for some time now and can't find any way to change the speed manually.  I'm pretty sure I can tweak the timings but I haven't seen anything for speed.  Any specific spot I should looking?  I feel like it's in BIOS but I didn't see much there other than the XMP button.

Set BIOS on advanced mode (F7?)

Find the OC panel and search for some option that lets toggle RAM speed from auto to manual. Most of the time, once you hit manual or simply by changing the "auto" will enable a plethora of options related to timings and speed.

[Winter_German]

10 hours ago, faziten said:

Set BIOS on advanced mode (F7?)

Find the OC panel and search for some option that lets toggle RAM speed from auto to manual. Most of the time, once you hit manual or simply by changing the "auto" will enable a plethora of options related to timings and speed.

Awesome, thanks!  I'll give it a try when I get home.

[Winter_German]

22 hours ago, faziten said:

Set BIOS on advanced mode (F7?)

Find the OC panel and search for some option that lets toggle RAM speed from auto to manual. Most of the time, once you hit manual or simply by changing the "auto" will enable a plethora of options related to timings and speed.

So I turned XMP on and just set my SA voltage to 1.16 V and my IO to 1.11 V.  My memory is running at 2933 at 1.36 V.  I don't have any warning coming up anymore, but does this sound like a safe configuration?  There's no chance I'm undervolting anything right?

[faziten]

2 hours ago, Winter_German said:

So I turned XMP on and just set my SA voltage to 1.16 V and my IO to 1.11 V.  My memory is running at 2933 at 1.36 V.  I don't have any warning coming up anymore, but does this sound like a safe configuration?  There's no chance I'm undervolting anything right?

sound good for a 1151 build.

Using the rig is the best testament to it's stability, you could run prime95 for an entire month, and then have a random crash playing with the dinosaur in google chrome when internet goes down.

 

Values themselves look fine. you could eventually tighten a .01 on each, but it's well within margin of error. Save this config for future reference and dump the entire setting on a file just in case you need to flush the entire motherboard bios.

[Jarsky]

3 hours ago, Winter_German said:

So I turned XMP on and just set my SA voltage to 1.16 V and my IO to 1.11 V.  My memory is running at 2933 at 1.36 V.  I don't have any warning coming up anymore, but does this sound like a safe configuration?  There's no chance I'm undervolting anything right?

Thats perfectly fine. You can go up to around 1.2v on both vccsa & vccio safely when overclocking these Intel chips. Normally when you overclock the CPU it will push the SA further to around 1.24-1.25V thats really as high as you want to go for a consistent overclock. Above that is more for enthusiast OC'ing rather than sustained. So you still have plenty of room but if its stable there 2933Mhz is probably high enough for an Intel CPU. You aren't going to see any tangible difference pushing it further. 

 

And no you cant undervolt it.