What is a good overclock for my ram?

[Joseph Hartness]

I have corsair vengeance 2666mhz ram on a z170 motherboard, was wondering what the safest overclock is? I am fairly new to all this so any help would be appreciated, thanks

[Guest]

The question is why? 

[Joseph Hartness]

Just now, deXxterlab97 said:

The question is why? 

I feel like overclocking my ram that is the only reason. I don't have a specific reason, I just want to overclock ram.

[Rune]

RAM is usually pretty highly binned. If you have 2666 rated ram, that's probably all you are going to get. If it reached 2800 reliably it would have been sold as 2800.

[You_are_a_cunt]

No substantial benefit from overclocking ram

[Joseph Hartness]

1 minute ago, Rune said:

RAM is usually pretty highly binned. If you have 2666 rated ram, that's probably all you are going to get. If it reached 2800 reliably it would have been sold as 2800.

It is listed under the stores page that it can be overclocked.

[Joseph Hartness]

1 minute ago, revsilverspine said:

No substantial benefit from overclocking ram

I realize this, as i stated I just wanted to know if i could.

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

just don't - not worth the time - sry

[Mooshi]

Really not worth throwing stability away for 1-2fps boost. 2666mhz is the sweet spot for DDR4. 

[VVoltor]

Where is the pc master race spirit here?

Overclocking just for the sake of overclocking! Hell yeah!

 

Just see how far you can push it running some stress tests. As Rune said, you probably won't be able to push it much beyond advertised speeds but why not? There's no danger in it, unless you apply stupid amounts of volts to it.

 

Also note, in some configurations running the RAM at certain speeds can have a slight effect on CPU clocks (pushing it slightly higher or lower), so keep an eye on that.

[Owlman]

14 minutes ago, Joseph Hartness said:

It is listed under the stores page that it can be overclocked.

The reason it says that you can overclock this RAM is because Skylake only supports DDR4 @ 2133MHz  without OC. You should activate XMP in BIOS/UEFI to get the most out of your RAM 

[Mooshi]

7 minutes ago, VVoltor said:

Where is the pc master race spirit here?

Overclocking just for the sake of overclocking! Hell yeah!

 

Just see how far you can push it running some stress tests. As Rune said, you probably won't be able to push it much beyond advertised speeds but why not? There's no danger in it, unless you apply stupid amounts of volts to it.

 

Also note, in some configurations running the RAM at certain speeds can have a slight effect on CPU clocks (pushing it slightly higher or lower), so keep an eye on that.

Overclocking ram is such a low return tho lol. Although 2666mhz ram should be able to hit 2800 minimum. 

[Morgan Everett]

5 hours ago, deXxterlab97 said:

The question is why? 

Because of significant improvements to gaming performance in CPU-bound scenarios.

 

 

[typographie]

7 hours ago, VVoltor said:

Overclocking just for the sake of overclocking! Hell yeah!

In my opinion, that's the only right reason to overclock any component. Lots of us overclock our CPUs to a razor's edge of stability and then play mostly GPU-bound games. If you're not doing it primarily for the fun of overclocking, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

 

@Joseph Hartness You'll have to find the limits of your own hardware, but I can give you my RAM overclocking newbie experience: My Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666 went to 3200 MHz and is stable with about 1.32 V, which more or less matches the specifications of retail Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200. I didn't mess with timings and I didn't try to push the overclock much further than that, as I was already pleased with the results. 3000–3200 MHz seems to be where the biggest performances gains are in most benchmarks, anyway.

 

Retail DDR4 comes at up to 1.35 V and that's within Skylake/Kaby Lake specs, so at least until that point I don't think it's an issue of "safety" per se. Your kit is probably 1.2 V by default, so if you bump the DRAM voltage up to 1.3–1.35 V, you'll probably get something out of it.

[Paradine Sage]

If you mean turning on the XMP profile (or entering that data manually) to hit the speeds the ram is advertised at then yeah, you should generally do that. Although you might have to tweak things to get it stable depending on your specific situation.

 

If you mean trying to go beyond the RAM's rated speeds then 1) RAM is generally binned very aggressively and it is thus incredibly rare that you find a sample that can do noticeably better than advertised unless you are buying the highest end RAM in that manufacturing line, 2) getting a RAM OC stable when going beyond rated spec can be incredibly tedious., 3) it generally offers relatively little return for the amount of time and effort required.