overclocking ram and cpu at same time

Pc6777 · July 20, 2020

i have an i7 6700k and 16 gbs of gskill ddr4-3000 ram and an asus z170-k motherboard, the cpu is stable at 4,6 ghz 1.33 volts so far and temps stay low but i also didn't have my gpu running with it but they still should be ok with my gpu running as they were well within safe range. it seems there's a cutoff on this cpu and anything over 4.6 ghz increases voltage and heat a lot so i probably wont go for 4.7 or 4.8 ghz, to get 4.7 ghz to finish cinibench i had to increase voltage a little above 1.4 volts and temps were passable but if i ran it for hours at a time with my gpu running and producing heat I doubt the temps would be anywhere near passable at 4.7 ghz and tha'ts with a half decent cooler and good airflow with lots of case fans, Im confused about ram and cpu overclocking and if the cpu and ram overclcocks effect each other which I think they do. I can't enable the xmp on my ram to get it to the rated 3000 speed with the cpu overclock which is really annoying. so if I have a cpu overclock I cant have as high as a ram overclcok and vise vera? and if thats true how do i overlclock my ram and what speeds/settings should i try with my current cpu overlcock? I at least want to get it somewhere in between the default speed and the xmp speed like so like 2500ish? im willing to go as high on ram as i can safely. I'm also confused about ram timings and im pretty sure i need to manually set them for a ram overclock and not just increase voltage and speed like on a cpu. Also another semi related question, does msi afterburner sometimes give faulty cpu temps? the asus software for my motherboard (suit 3.0) and msi afterburner give me significantly different overall temps i trust the asus software and not msi afterburner because the asus software is made for the motherboard so i have been going with those temps.

Cyracus · July 20, 2020

27 minutes ago, Pc6777 said:

Im confused about ram and cpu overclocking and if the cpu and ram overclcocks effect each other which I think they do

yes they do

29 minutes ago, Pc6777 said:

I'm also confused about ram timings and im pretty sure i need to manually set them for a ram overclock and not just increase voltage and speed like on a cpu

You can increase voltage, and try with the same timings, or loosen timings. Probably worth looking at some guides if you want to get serious with it. My google skills can't find a list of basic timings to try, sorry.

Pc6777 · July 20, 2020

I was thinking if I can't have xmp enabled on ram and an oc my CPU at the same time I can copy the xmp ram settings and timings for a manual ram oc of and see how that goes. Overclocking the ram too high does worry me a bit tho because I had screen artifacts with an attempted ram oc and a a bsod but after I put ram at stock speeds and kept the cpu oc at 4.6 ghz everything worked fine and I have a dedicated gpu so it's not like the system ram was my vram and my gpu is like 2 months old and has never caused any problems so definitely not some sort of gpu problem, well not really a problem beacause it went away when set back to stock speeds/auto but still. So far I have a 13 percent theoretical performance increase with my CPU overclock if I can get ram even to 2500 that would increase overall cpu performance to close to 20 percent and if im able to hit 3000 that's probably close to 25 precent in situations were fast ram and cpu speed matters, it seems some applications could care less about ram speed but some benifit a lot.