Upgrade to higher speed memory

[Niidhogg]

Hej !

 

I currently have DDR4 2133MHz RAM with an i5 8600K, is their real reasons to upgrade to faster memory ? In the Intel documentation for the processor it says something like: Memory speed: 2133MHz and 2666MHz, does it mean i can't put faster memory with this CPU ?

 

Thx !

[Niidhogg]

My motherboard is an Asus Z370-A, what does it imply then ?

[Chris Pratt]

6 minutes ago, Niidhogg said:

My motherboard is an Asus Z370-A, what does it imply then ?

The 2666Mhz speed is the JEDEC officially supported base clock. Higher clocked RAM is actually an overclock, just one confirmed by the manufacturer, i.e. 3600Mhz means that the DIMM can be overclocked to 3600Mhz, not that that is its actual speed. This overclock is referred as its XMP (eXtreme Memory Profile), and you have to enable XMP in your BIOS in order to use it.

 

All that is to say that if you have a Z motherboard, you are free to try really any RAM speed. Not all are guaranteed to work, and the mobo manufacturer might give you some guidance via the QVL or other documentation about how high you can reasonably go. The only thing guaranteed, though, is those JEDEC clocks, i.e. 2166Mhz and 2666Mhz, since that's what's advertised.

[Jurrunio]

16 minutes ago, Niidhogg said:

My motherboard is an Asus Z370-A, what does it imply then ?

that means you can overclock memory beyond factory specs. Same applies to non-K CPUs on Intel.

 

and there will be a performance gain in games.