ddr4 Ram Setup Confusion

[poodle169]

I built a new rig using a i7-6700k, ASUS Maximus VIII Formula, a Silverstone AR06 cooler, no GPU (yet ), Corsair HX 850i PSU, Carbide Air 540, Windows 10 Home, and 2x8 GB sticks of Corsair Dominator Platinum C16 3200 MHz. The system registered it as 2133 MHz, I enabled XMP and set it to 3200 MHz, but it was unstable. I toned it down to 3100 MHz. Is this normal? How can I fix it? Is there a factor I am missing.

[swordsman247]

6 minutes ago, poodle169 said:

I built a new rig using a i7-6700k, ASUS Maximus VIII Formula, a Silverstone AR06 cooler, no GPU (yet ), Corsair HX 850i PSU, Carbide Air 540, Windows 10 Home, and 2x8 GB sticks of Corsair Dominator Platinum C16 3200 MHz. The system registered it as 2133 MHz, I enabled XMP and set it to 3200 MHz, but it was unstable. I toned it down to 3100 MHz. Is this normal? How can I fix it? Is there a factor I am missing.

That's somewhat normal anything above the 2133mhz is an "overclocked" setting on the skylake chipsets, not all the kits/boards play nice at higher xmp settings even if they should. I'd just run it at the 3100mhz if it's stable. There's not a huge benefit to a slight bump anyway.

[pwn_intended]

Only 2133 is certified to work stable. The other speeds are all considered an overclock by the motherboard, and while technically supported, not necessarily guaranteed that it will work 100% of the time with all RAM kits, even if they are rated for said speeds. The CPU itself can also limit your ram frequency. (things may be different with skylake, but I know this was the case with ivy bridge)

[Cyracus]

Overclocking the cpu can also limit ram OC and vice versa.