I bought some B-Die DDR4 to go with my i9-11900k, please spoonfeed me timings.

[sunwind]

Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix Z590-E

CPU: Intel i9-11900k

RAM: G.Skill RipJaws V Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) (PC4-32000) CL15-16-16-36 1.50V Model F4-4000C15Q-32GVK

GPU: AMD Radeon RT 6950 XT

HDD: 990 PRO 2TB

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/paradoxumlexx/saved/syDkf7

 

To spare the long story I've decided to stick with this setup for as long as possible (years), money needs to go to my 80TB unraid server for a while and this thing breezes through anything I've tried so far.

 

Anyway I watercool and I like to overclock.

 

51/2core 50/5core 49/6 core

1.490vcore

 

I could probably lower my CPU temps but it's stable right now so I wanna play with the ram.

I've found eg; https://github.com/integralfx/MemTestHelper/blob/oc-guide/DDR4 OC Guide.md

 

But I really don't have time to learn all of that. As in I'm generally busy with other stuff and it's far too much info for me especially cause it's numbers and ADHD etc.

 

But I do want to eventually understand it and be able to tweak my own ram without referring to guides or copying random peoples timings I find online.

 

 

I got this with exactly stock XMP settings and just changing 36 to 28 (which I did by accident actually heh).

Just give me a few secondary timings and recommended changes and why etc, somewhere to start and I'll play with those.

 

What program should I use in windows to display or even modify timings?

 

Thanks!

[RONOTHAN##]

19 minutes ago, sunwind said:

51/2core 50/5core 49/6 core

1.490vcore

This is a ton of voltage for 5.1GHz, I would start lowering the voltage first and get it to something a bit more reasonable. 

 

19 minutes ago, sunwind said:

What program should I use in windows to display or even modify timings?

ASUS MemTweakIt. There's tons of links out there that exist for it, though the place I always get it from is the HWBot forums:

https://community.hwbot.org/topic/220910-asus-rog-maximus-apex-z790-apex-15/

It's under the tools section. I'd also get Turbo VCore while you're there since that's very useful for doing CPU overclocking if you have an ASUS board. 

 

19 minutes ago, sunwind said:

Just give me a few secondary timings and recommended changes and why etc

If you only want to do the bare minimum of timing adjustments, tREFI and tRFC. These affect how long your memory is refreshing and therefore unable to do any work, where tRFC/tREFI is the percentage of time your memory will be unavailable. You want tRFC to be as low as possible with tREFI being as high as possible. Good B die will minimize tRFC to something like 250, while mediocre will bottom out at around 300-350, and tREFI will vary based on the ambient temperature, where you can get 65535 (the highest value you can set on 11th gen) to work if you have good memory temps, but if you have a power hungry GPU that cooks your RAM like a 6950 XT and no airflow over your memory you might be limited to something like 30000. It's a good idea to stress test these with Furmark running in the background just to make sure your GPU isn't going to roast your RAM. 

 

Those two timings, especially tREFI, have the biggest affect on your memory performance and are something like half of the total performance uplift you can hope for from custom timings. The other timings are still worth setting though, especially since most of them are set them as low as they can go while still booting as that will probably be stable. 

 

EDIT: Also, make sure you're in Gear 1. 4266MT/s with 4x8GB is an extremely high clock for Gear 1, so unless you've got a god-tier memory controller you're almost certainly in Gear 2, and the latency penalty of Gear 2 is very hard to out-clock with dual rank memory. 3600 CL14 in Gear 1 will likely be faster overall than 4266 CL15 in Gear 2. 

Edited March 7 by RONOTHAN##

[sunwind]

I just upped it from 1.480 because I had a WHEA crash trying to start a 3dmark benchmark. I got a bad chip?

 

>with tREFI being as high as possible

Ah so this is why it would never boot when I lowered that...

 

RE; the temps. 

I bought these sinks:

 

 

I'm just about to drill holes in them so I can screw my RAM waterblock to them. The Byski ram plates I had were fucked and did not stay together anymore + these things are much thicker metal I can see them moving much more heat away.

 

Right now I just have the waterblock taped over the top of them until my carbon tipped drill bits arrive.

 

Just to show it off here's the rig;

 

Still aWIP.

 

[RONOTHAN##]

8 minutes ago, sunwind said:

I just upped it from 1.480 because I had a WHEA crash trying to start a 3dmark benchmark. I got a bad chip?

Sounds like it. Either that or your LLC settings are weirdly setup. 

 

8 minutes ago, sunwind said:

I bought these sinks:

You didn't really need to go for the water cooled RAM, a simple fan would've done just fine.

But yeah, if your RAM is water cooled then you should be able to just set tREFI to 65k and run the memory voltage at up to 1.6V. 

 

Don't know if you saw what I said about the memory gear modes as well, make sure you're in Gear 1 for the best performance. 

 

 

Also quote so we get a notification. 

[sunwind]

On 3/7/2024 at 10:31 PM, RONOTHAN## said:

Sounds like it. Either that or your LLC settings are weirdly setup. 

 

You didn't really need to go for the water cooled RAM, a simple fan would've done just fine.

But yeah, if your RAM is water cooled then you should be able to just set tREFI to 65k and run the memory voltage at up to 1.6V. 

 

Don't know if you saw what I said about the memory gear modes as well, make sure you're in Gear 1 for the best performance. 

 

 

Also quote so we get a notification. 

 

I've always watercooled my ram 'just because' really, but lately reading up about overclocking ddr4 b-die and how it can be sensitive to heat but fine with high voltages and then people talking about making sure you have adequate cooling made me feel justified after all these years of hearing people say it's pointless. 

 

Yeah I have always been using C1. People say gear or clock 1, HWINFO has these two at the bottom;

 

should I be changing command rate at all? I lowered trfc to 690 from 700 - I tried 650 and then 600 and it was not stable so decided to go down in much smaller increments. is it good that Tras was able to go from 36 to 28 so easily without loosening anything else and raising it to 4266? 

 

I don't remember what I did with the CPU but I lowered LLC to level 2 and changed to an offset voltage of.. I can't remember right now but 

 

seems like it's going high in volts but seems desktop stable (went to sleep before any testing).

what about the thermal? I have been meaning to re-seat the cpu block (velocity 2) and use MX4 instead of LM. Will do it the same time I get the memory block mounted.

[sunwind]

Wow big increase just from 65535 trefi 

[RONOTHAN##]

33 minutes ago, sunwind said:

I've always watercooled my ram 'just because' really, but lately reading up about overclocking ddr4 b-die and how it can be sensitive to heat but fine with high voltages and then people talking about making sure you have adequate cooling made me feel justified after all these years of hearing people say it's pointless. 

I will still say it's pointless, since a 40mm fan and stock heat spreaders is enough to keep it from overheating, plus you'll have to worry about other components in your loop causing the water temp to go up and cook your RAM. You do you though. 

 

34 minutes ago, sunwind said:

Yeah I have always been using C1. People say gear or clock 1, HWINFO has these two at the bottom;

CR1 and Gear 1 are two very different things. Gear mode is the ratio of clock speed between the memory itself and the CPU's memory controller. Gear 1 is a 1:1 ratio between the two and has significantly better memory latency, while Gear 2 is a 2:1 ratio where the memory controller will be running at half speed, allowing for much higher memory speeds but at a massive latency disadvantage. You can technically outclock the latency penalty of Gear 2, but since that usually requires speeds above 4400MT/s, you're not likely to get that to work with dual rank and therefore will be better off in Gear 1. 

 

38 minutes ago, sunwind said:

should I be changing command rate at all? I lowered trfc to 690 from 700 - I tried 650 and then 600 and it was not stable so decided to go down in much smaller increments. is it good that Tras was able to go from 36 to 28 so easily without loosening anything else and raising it to 4266? 

You don't want to touch command rate, since on 11th gen it always does 1T because it counts memory controller clocks, meaning that when you're in Gear 2 it's actually running at 2T command rate. tRAS doing 28 is very common for B die, if you step over to AMD where you can set it lower than 28, it's pretty common for it to do 25 or lower (my one kit of B die ran the primaries at 3800 CL14-13-13-21, though there are plenty of kits that would be stuck at 24). 

 

Being stuck at tRFC 690 though is exceptionally terrible however. Even the worst kits of B die should be able to get into the 300s fully stable with ease. Either something is wrong with your memory cooling and your memory is accidentally being cooked (I.E. over 60c), you have a BIOS issue, or 4266 is on the ragged edge of stability, causing it to fall over at the slightest hint of lower tRCD. 

 

48 minutes ago, sunwind said:

I don't remember what I did with the CPU but I lowered LLC to level 2 and changed to an offset voltage of.. I can't remember right now but 

 

seems like it's going high in volts but seems desktop stable (went to sleep before any testing).

That is waaaaay too much voltage for a 14nm Intel chip. You don't want to go above 1.5V in any circumstances for daily if you don't want your CPU to degrade within a few months, and realistically you should not be going above 1.45V. AFAIK for most ASUS boards, you want the LLC on Level 4 for the best results, and a static voltage is likely going to be better here. Besides, for the settings you're running, you'd be better off at stock, since the chip should naturally do 5.3 single core/5.1GHz all core, and should do it at actually safe voltage levels. 

 

53 minutes ago, sunwind said:

what about the thermal? I have been meaning to re-seat the cpu block (velocity 2) and use MX4 instead of LM. Will do it the same time I get the memory block mounted.

The voltage is too high to get an accurate reading of the thermals. 

[sunwind]

The bios is estimating it needs at least that much for 51 acx2 etc, and more for 5.3ghz, it puts it up there if I do the AI overclock - if it's that dangerous would the motherboard AI be doing it?

 

> you'd be better off at stock, since the chip should naturally do 5.3 single core/5.1GHz all core, and should do it at actually safe voltage levels. 

it doesn't because of thermal though, it's worse, which is why I am on 51x3 core trying to lower both.

[sunwind]

>I will still say it's pointless, since a 40mm fan and stock heat spreaders is enough to keep it from overheating, plus you'll have to worry about other components in your loop causing the water temp to go up and cook your RAM. You do you though. 

 

Have you done watercooling at all? this isn't how it works. the water is always cooler than any component. Hell my water temp when gaming is about 42c, the ram runs at 47c already.

 

I'm slowly lowering trefi, why does it start at 700 if 300 is easily done? what about the next onesd that are 520 and 320 respectively? (can't recall the names obviously)

 

Thanks.

[sunwind]

Managed to change all to 300.. must have been something else causing instability.

 

 

pretty good right? sometimes write and copy go to 7 or 8k but i'm guessing that's just some bug.

 

 

 

even 500 seems unstable  but I don't know if it could be helped by adjusting any of these voltages;

 

[freeagent]

8 hours ago, sunwind said:

the ram runs at 47c already.

At 1.6v my ram is more than 10c cooler with just a little airflow.

 

8 hours ago, sunwind said:

I'm slowly lowering trefi, why does it start at 700 

 

Sounds like you are using XMP.

[Ebony Falcon]

Todzila that you bro ?