Is XMP boost safe?

[HungryHamster]

Is there any danger in enabling XMP boost? Is this something you would recommend for someone with little experience overclocking anything?

[Jurrunio]

Depends on what the memory kit is and your CPU. XMP isnt overclocking your memory kit but it is exceeding what the CPU is promised by the manufacturer to do.

[HungryHamster]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

Depends on what the memory kit is and your CPU. XMP isnt overclocking your memory kit but it is exceeding what the CPU is promised by the manufacturer to do.

Hmm I see. I'm interested in getting CORSAIR Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5 6600 CL 32 RAM for an Intel i9-13900k. I heard that the only way I could not get capped at 5600MHz would be to enable XMP boost, but I don't want to do anything that would possibly lead to issues.

[RONOTHAN##]

9 minutes ago, HungryHamster said:

Is there any danger in enabling XMP boost?

Nope. There can be times that it is unstable or just doesn't POST if it's a very aggressive XMP, but the biggest risk with that is you have to clear CMOS, re-enable XMP, and lower the frequency 200MT/s at a time until it POSTs and becomes stable. 

[Jurrunio]

7 minutes ago, HungryHamster said:

Hmm I see. I'm interested in getting CORSAIR Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5 6600 CL 32 RAM for an Intel i9-13900k. I heard that the only way I could not get capped at 5600MHz would be to enable XMP boost, but I don't want to do anything that would possibly lead to issues.

XMP boost isnt a common name for it btw, just call it XMP or XMP profile

 

6600MHz isnt that high for 13th gen, you should be good.

[HungryHamster]

40 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Nope. There can be times that it is unstable or just doesn't POST if it's a very aggressive XMP, but the biggest risk with that is you have to clear CMOS, re-enable XMP, and lower the frequency 200MT/s at a time until it POSTs and becomes stable. 

Thanks for the info. Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the impression that XMP was just like a box I check in the bios and that it takes care of everything else automatically. If I understand you correctly, there's a chance it will lead to my computer not booting? I don't know anything about POST, CMOS or lowering the frequency so maybe I should just stay away from XMP and go with a 5600MHz set of RAM.

[TylerD321]

10 minutes ago, HungryHamster said:

Thanks for the info. Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the impression that XMP was just like a box I check in the bios and that it takes care of everything else automatically. If I understand you correctly, there's a chance it will lead to my computer not booting? I don't know anything about POST, CMOS or lowering the frequency so maybe I should just stay away from XMP and go with a 5600MHz set of RAM.

XMP is a setting you enable in bios. Setting it to XMP is "technically" overclocking but if you use the XMP profile it will default to the manufacturers specifications. For example, on my processor, the i7 10700k, the "max" speed it supports is 2933 MHz, anything faster is overclocking. However, I am running 3600 MHz ram with zero issues whatsoever. You technically can overclock it past the XMP profile that is preinstalled but I wouldn't recommend it if you do not know what you are doing.

 

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/199335/intel-core-i710700k-processor-16m-cache-up-to-5-10-ghz.html

[HungryHamster]

2 minutes ago, TylerD321 said:

XMP is a setting you enable in bios. Setting it to XMP is "technically" overclocking but if you use the XMP profile it will default to the manufacturers specifications. For example, on my processor, the i7 10700k, the "max" speed it supports is 2933 MHz, anything faster is overclocking. However, I am running 3600 MHz ram with zero issues whatsoever. You technically can overclock it past the XMP profile that is preinstalled but I wouldn't recommend it if you do not know what you are doing.

 

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/199335/intel-core-i710700k-processor-16m-cache-up-to-5-10-ghz.html

OK, that's good to know. So I can just enable the XMP setting and it will use the XMP profile specified for this memory so that it will increase the MHz to the 6600MHz advertised? Then if I (hopefully unlikely) run into issues with stability, I can just disable XMP in the bios to fix things?

[TylerD321]

3 minutes ago, HungryHamster said:

OK, that's good to know. So I can just enable the XMP setting and it will use the XMP profile specified for this memory so that it will increase the MHz to the 6600MHz advertised? Then if I (hopefully unlikely) run into issues with stability, I can just disable XMP in the bios to fix things?

That is my understanding. Even if you run into issues at 6600 MHz you could probably find some middle ground to still get over stock speed but less than the speed that you were having issues at. (But you can definitely run it without XMP if you aren't able to figure out the best settings for yourself or not confident in your selected speeds, the only issue is leaving speed on the table that you paid for. It WILL work at stock speeds.)