Can I get a new chipset or is cpu not compatible? (I’m new to this type of stuff)

[hawken04]

I have a i7-7700 and wanted to upgrade my RAM to 3600 MHz 16 gb, the only thing stopping me from buying it is what I had recently learned about my chipset, apparently it can only run 2133 MHz, my chipset is a H170, can I upgrade to a better chipset or will it not be compatible? If there are any compatible ones out there then please give me recommendations, no budget, just want to get the job done with.

[Origami Cactus]

You could upgrade to z170 or z270 motherboards.

But your cpu doesn't really benefit from faster ram, so i would save that money for a full upgrade.

[MadmanRB]

6 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

You could upgrade to z170 or z270 motherboards.

But your cpu doesn't really benefit from faster ram, so i would save that money for a full upgrade.

Agreed, not much to do outside of rebasing a whole new system almost as running non K processors on such hardware would be silly and its not like it would benefit much from faster RAM here

[5x5]

Not worth it. Just save up and get Ryzen if you want an upgrade.

[hawken04]

10 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

You cannot upgrade just the chipset, the chipset is the collection of various chips (hence chip set) on the board that control dozens of different features like the drives, ram, pci and pcie slots, audio, USB, etc

Theyre soldered on permanently.

 

Different chipsets and processors only support some kinds of ram speeds. For example, B360 supports 2400mhz DDR4 for Celeron/Pentium processors but 2666mhz for i-series processors.

Meanwhile Z370 and Z390 would support not only those base speeds but also XMP to allow memory to run at even higher speeds.

 

All DDR4 is either 2133, 2400 or 2666mhz. Factory certified overclocks are what make 3000mhz+ ram, and are configured to default to that speed with the bios if it's capable of memory overclocking.

 

You could upgrade your motherboard but really there's not much use, it would be better to move to a whole new platform rather than upgrade nearly topped out locked kaby lake.

I see what you mean, thanks for the help

[hawken04]

 

15 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

You cannot upgrade just the chipset, the chipset is the collection of various chips (hence chip set) on the board that control dozens of different features like the drives, ram, pci and pcie slots, audio, USB, etc

Theyre soldered on permanently.

 

Different chipsets and processors only support some kinds of ram speeds. For example, B360 supports 2400mhz DDR4 for Celeron/Pentium processors but 2666mhz for i-series processors.

Meanwhile Z370 and Z390 would support not only those base speeds but also XMP to allow memory to run at even higher speeds.

 

All DDR4 is either 2133, 2400 or 2666mhz. Factory certified overclocks are what make 3000mhz+ ram, and are configured to default to that speed with the bios if it's capable of memory overclocking.

 

You could upgrade your motherboard but really there's not much use, it would be better to move to a whole new platform rather than upgrade nearly topped out locked kaby lake.

So if I were to get 3600 MHz then my system wouldn’t run faster not because of the chipset but just because of the cpu itself?

[hawken04]

1 minute ago, Genwyn said:

Both. Though it depends more on specific hardware generation these days. For Kaby Lake/7th gen you would need both a K series processor and Z series chipset to use XMP to overclock ram.

The 7700 only supports up to 2400mhz and some H170 support 2133 while some support 2400mhz.

So you're probably stuck at 2133.

Ok now I get it

[hawken04]

2 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Both. Though it depends more on specific hardware generation these days. For Kaby Lake/7th gen you would need both a K series processor and Z series chipset to use XMP to overclock ram.

The 7700 only supports up to 2400mhz and some H170 support 2133 while some support 2400mhz.

So you're probably stuck at 2133.

So I probably would just want to get that ram later on with another cpu with k in its name and a good chipset and new motherboard pretty much. Well I got other things to buy, I’ll just save up for those “other thing”

[hawken04]

1 hour ago, Genwyn said:

Yeah, it's not too vital. Ram speed isn't the most important thing to factor into a build unless you're running AMD Ryzen or a few kinds of ram intensive software that like faster memory.

 

Oh alright