OC on Ram - Is it as easy as setting higher XMP profile?

[Bouncewasp]

Hi All,

 

Perhaps a silly question but I've looked this up and it's not immediately obvious to me if it *could* be as simple as this to start with...? I've done a fair bit of CPU overclocking (hobbyist/enthusiast - I'm no pro!), but never memory other than setting XMP profile and leaving it at that.

 

I have 2x8GB Corsair LPX 3200mhz C16. X570-E Strix mobo. I've got BIOS set to the XMP profile for 3200mhz and that's it. If I wanted to try and get 3600mhz, is it as simple as just changing the profile to the 3600mhz in the BIOS and seeing that works? All as a starting point, and appreciate timings may well be worse (3600@C18 for example) so I might not gain anything overall, but wanted to try it and do some benchmarking just to play around.

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

[AnomalyDesign]

Typically RAM will only have 1 or sometimes 2 XMP profiles built in. Occasionally boards offer other pre-set options (MSI has a feature called "memory try it") that let you experiment with faster settings without too much manual adjustment. 

 

You can determine what type of RAM chips are in your Corsair RAM. To do this look below the barcode on the RAM heatspreader for where it says "ver x.xx". The first digit tells you the manufacturer, and the second digits tell you the type of die, so ver 4.31 is samsung b-die, for example. If you look up the type of ram chips you have, you can look up safe voltages and speeds to try.

 

The easiest way to start is to look for the DRAM voltage setting in your BIOS, and set it to 1.4. Then you can load the standard 3200mhz XMP setting for your RAM. From there try turning the speed up one setting at a time (or try going straight to 3600 if you want). Most boards should just reset their settings if they fail to post, otherwise you might have to clear cmos.

 

Past that you can start playing with all of the timings, and easily lose a whole week!

[AnomalyDesign]

More complete list of memory dies used by Corsair, based on the "ver" number:

 

3.20 Micron 4Gbit Rev.A Presumed
3.21 Micron 4Gbit Rev.B Confirmed
3.22 Micron 4Gbit Rev.E* Speculated
3.22 Micron 4Gbit Rev.F* Confirmed
3.31 Micron 8Gbit Rev.B Confirmed
3.33 Micron 8Gbit Rev.D Presumed
3.34 Micron 8Gbit Rev.E Speculated
4.14 Samsung 4Gbit D-die (4x16) Confirmed
4.23 Samsung 4Gbit D-die Confirmed
4.24 Samsung 4Gbit E-die Confirmed
4.31 Samsung 8Gbit B-die Confirmed
4.49 Samsung 16Gbit M-die Speculated
4.40 Samsung 16Gbit A-die Speculated
5.29 Hynix 4Gbit MFR Confirmed
5.20 Hynix 4Gbit AFR Confirmed
5.21 Hynix 4Gbit BJR Speculated
5.39 Hynix 8Gbit MFR Confirmed
5.30 Hynix 8Gbit AFR Presumed
5.31 Hynix 8Gbit "BFR"??? Speculated
5.32 Hynix 8Gbit CJR Presumed
8.20** Nanya 4Gbit Rev.A Speculated
8.30** Nanya 8Gbit Rev.A Speculated

[xg32]

51 minutes ago, Bouncewasp said:

Hi All,

 

Perhaps a silly question but I've looked this up and it's not immediately obvious to me if it *could* be as simple as this to start with...? I've done a fair bit of CPU overclocking (hobbyist/enthusiast - I'm no pro!), but never memory other than setting XMP profile and leaving it at that.

 

I have 2x8GB Corsair LPX 3200mhz C16. X570-E Strix mobo. I've got BIOS set to the XMP profile for 3200mhz and that's it. If I wanted to try and get 3600mhz, is it as simple as just changing the profile to the 3600mhz in the BIOS and seeing that works? All as a starting point, and appreciate timings may well be worse (3600@C18 for example) so I might not gain anything overall, but wanted to try it and do some benchmarking just to play around.

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

overall i think mem overclocking can be harder than gpu/cpu oc, but it's a good cheap way to squeeze out the last bit of performance on a rig (making a maxed out cpu even faster)

 

Lately for entry level oc, the mobos seem to be tuned for gskill ram more than others in general, while some corsair sticks struggles to even run xmp. Still theres a decent chance that the oc will just work with c18 3600 at 1.4v. Ram oc typically adds another 3-5% to stock performance, though with recent platforms, having a dual rank setup seems to be more important than the oc itself (optimal setup is oc'd dual rank).

[Bouncewasp]

@AnomalyDesign Many thanks for your detailed reply there - fortunately I can see my ram barcode from outside the case  It's ver 4.32 which from a quick google maybe Samsung B-die, or Samsung OEM?

 

My ram runs fine using just the single built in XMP (or DOCP, because ASUS) profile which is C16-18-18-18-32 from memory, and I think it automatically sets the voltage to 1.4V but I can check by booting to BIOS real quick.

 

Reason for playing about now is I just got my 5800x installed (big job due to custom loop and me adding another rad whilst my rig was apart), wanting to do my own tests to see if I can get IC higher and look at differences in CPU performance.

 

@xg32 also thanks - never had an issue with default XMP profile so will maybe just try upping it a single XMP profile at a time.  

[AnomalyDesign]

3 hours ago, Bouncewasp said:

@AnomalyDesign Many thanks for your detailed reply there - fortunately I can see my ram barcode from outside the case  It's ver 4.32 which from a quick google maybe Samsung B-die, or Samsung OEM?

 

My ram runs fine using just the single built in XMP (or DOCP, because ASUS) profile which is C16-18-18-18-32 from memory, and I think it automatically sets the voltage to 1.4V but I can check by booting to BIOS real quick.

 

@xg32 

The bottom post on this page has some settings for ver 4.32 ram (it's not b-die unfortunately) to get it to 3600mhz at 18-19-19-19-42 that others have had success with. Could be a good starting point rather than trying to start from scratch with all the sub timings: https://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=190066