Ram speed on OEM motherboard

[CantCompute]

Hi,

 

I've just upgraded my lenovo gaming PC with a corsair vengence lpx 2 x 16GB 2666MHz kit however it only runs at 2133MHz. Im told that the BIOS will only run ram at its default speed and there are no options to manually adjust speeds or enable xmp profiles. Is there a way of doing this in software (running win10 pro)? Is a 500 ish MHz drop that noticable?

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Origami Cactus]

16 minutes ago, CantCompute said:

Is there a way of doing this in software (running win10 pro)?

no

 

 

16 minutes ago, CantCompute said:

Is a 500 ish MHz drop that noticable?

No, if you have an intel cpu inside.

[porina]

Generally OEM mobos will run at the fastest JEDEC speed supported by both CPU and ram. Most enthusiast ram don't have higher JEDEC speeds programmed in it beyond 2133 or 2400. Note JEDEC speeds are relatively high latency anyway.

 

If the ram speed will make a difference depends on the use case. Many things are not significantly affected. Some things are strongly affected, but these are relatively uncommon. Given there's little you can do about it, just run as is.

 

A long shot, you could try running Intel XTU and see what options it gives, but don't get your hopes up.

[CantCompute]

Update: Decided to give Intel XTU a try. It allowed me to enable the xmp profile. After a reboot both bios and XTU report 2666MHz although task manager still reports 2133MHz. thanks to both of you for your advice. I can't really feel the difference so am going to stop messing with it here but others may find this result helpful

[porina]

Good to know that XTU managed to do that. Differences in performance are not so likely to be "felt" but should show up in some benchmarks if you do a before and after.

[Kisai]

15 minutes ago, CantCompute said:

Update: Decided to give Intel XTU a try. It allowed me to enable the xmp profile. After a reboot both bios and XTU report 2666MHz although task manager still reports 2133MHz. thanks to both of you for your advice. I can't really feel the difference so am going to stop messing with it here but others may find this result helpful

OEM systems do not have features to change timings most of the time because they are designed to have the same cpu/ram/hard drive for it's entire lifecycle. So if you replace the parts with ones of higher performance, the system may still only operate at the original performance.

 

YMMV though. For example, the XMP profile will typically not be available unless it's a K CPU (unlocked), and the system will select the highest memory speed it was aware of at the time of manufacture. You may try to update the BIOS to see if it recognizes it, but if it works at all I'd probably just leave it.

[porina]

15 minutes ago, Kisai said:

For example, the XMP profile will typically not be available unless it's a K CPU (unlocked), and the system will select the highest memory speed it was aware of at the time of manufacture.

You do not need a K CPU to overclock ram. The requirement is to have an OC enabled chipset e.g. Z series. However, there can be a difference between ram module SPD speed and CPU supported speed, so XMP can still potentially increase it on non-OC platforms in that scenario.