Can you overclock RAM?

[Pickelhaube]

I currently have 32GB of HyperX Fury DDR4 with an XMP profile of 2400MHz, but can I increase it to, say, 2666 or higher? The default maximum frequency out of the box is 2400MHz. Thanks!

 

 

[ARikozuM]

I think @MageTank has a guide on overclocking RAM.

[Dodgeyou]

2 minutes ago, RektSkrubs said:

I currently have 32GB of HyperX Fury DDR4 with an XMP profile of 2400MHz, but can I increase it to, say, 2666 or higher? The default maximum frequency out of the box is 2400MHz. Thanks!

 

 

You can boost it some but watch out for the timings as depending how that kit is it may not like the stock timings used at 2400

[AmIAGamer]

You can overclock ram. I'm not sure how, but you do it through the bios. Certain chips (CPU's) overclock better or worse, so it depends on your build.

 

[DildorTheDecent]

4 minutes ago, RektSkrubs said:

I currently have 32GB of HyperX Fury DDR4 with an XMP profile of 2400MHz, but can I increase it to, say, 2666 or higher? The default maximum frequency out of the box is 2400MHz. Thanks!

 

 

You can. But your motherboard or CPU might struggle to boot it. 

 

Lots of RAM is harder to OC. 

[Pickelhaube]

5 minutes ago, Dodgeyou said:

You can boost it some but watch out for the timings as depending how that kit is it may not like the stock timings used at 2400

Are better timings or better frequency better for trying to get as much performance out of the ram?

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, RektSkrubs said:

Are better timings or better frequency better for trying to get as much performance out of the ram?

Both, buy bandwidth is more important for your tasks.

[Drak3]

39 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

I think @MageTank has a guide on overclocking RAM.

He has the material and rough notes, but I don't think he has had the time to make a proper guide yet.

[RadiatingLight]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

He has the material and rough notes, but I don't think he has had the time to make a proper guide yet.

Will it by any chance include secondary and tertiary timings? because I have no idea how to use those and would really love to learn.

[Drak3]

Just now, RadiatingLight said:

Will it by any chance include secondary and tertiary timings? because I have no idea how to use those and would really love to learn.

Seeing how @MageTank

 Dismisses notion that primary timings are 'half the story,' and will sometime explain that tightening and loosening the correct tertiary timings has profound affects, I'd be surprised if he didn't.

[RadiatingLight]

24 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Seeing how @MageTank

 Dismisses notion that primary timings are 'half the story,' and will sometime explain that tightening and loosening the correct tertiary timings has profound affects, I'd be surprised if he didn't.

well. when it comes out make I will be sure to read.

seems really useful.

@MageTank and anyone else who makes guides, you are heroes.

[MageTank]

Never before have I been summoned by 3 different people. Could have sworn that the dragon balls had a global cooldown of some kind. 

 

As for ram overclocking, primary timings are great, as long as you understand their tradeoffs. When you reach a point to where you need copious amounts of voltage, or you have to lower your clock speed by more than 10% to stabilize them, then it's time to let them rest and look elsewhere. My best advice is: Leave your primary timings at stock JEDEC. Whatever that value is for your memory (DDR4 15-15-15-35, DDR3 9-9-9-27, etc) dial them in, and then dial in the voltage you wish to run 24/7. If you are one of those people that believe VDIMM can kill IMC's, I feel sorry for you, but I can at least give you the values intel recommends. For 24/7 use on Skylake/Kaby Lake's IMC, the max "safe" DDR4 voltage is 1.4125v. The max "safe" DDR3 voltage for Haswell is 1.575 (you will find that your DDR3 XMP's already go beyond this, at 1.65v, and no IMC's have died as a result of this, but what do I know? I am just a random guy on the internet). Dial these values in, and throw as much clock speed at it as you possibly can until you can't post.

 

Once you can no longer post, dial back to the last bootable value, and start testing it. Be sure to raise/lower your VCCIO/VCCSA as you see fit, just avoid going beyond 1.25v each and you will be fine. Once you have stable primary timings and clock speeds, start tinkering with tertiary timings. These are mostly used to obtain what I call "Bandwidth Efficiency". @done12many2 learned this recently, and has gained quite a bit of bandwidth for his kit, while also tremendously lowering his latency. Very proud of him. What this means is, your peak theoretical bandwidth is determined by your clock speeds, but your tertiary timings will dictate exactly how much of that theoretical bandwidth you can use. If your peak bandwidth is say, 50GB/s, but your efficiency is only 80%, you can only leverage 40GB/s. Working on your efficiency, you can achieve up to 99% efficiency (done1's write efficiency is exactly that, 99% of his peak bandwidth is usable). This is why I try to tell people that clock speeds and primary timings are not the be all, end all when it comes to ram speed. You might think your ram is fast since it's technically clocked higher, but if you can only use a fraction of it due to poor tertiary efficiency, you might as well be using a slower kit. Now, some motherboards are extremely good for auto-training of these timings, but even then, they are nowhere near as good as what one can achieve manually.

 

As for that guide, I have not had a break from work (I only got 1 day off in the past 10 days of working, getting hit hard this season) but I'll see if I can't delegate bits and pieces of my information to others, so that they can provide a guide for people. Besides. I don't want to write a memory guide until I can afford a Ryzen rig, so that I can provide information for Ryzen as well. I might buy a cheap Ryzen CPU, an expensive board, and go ham on memory overclocking until I feel comfortable enough to provide that kind of info. 

 

Disclaimer: This is by no means a "guide". This is just my quick and dirty methodology. I'll speak to some people that I trust in order to make a guide happen. It will just take time. 

[Pickelhaube]

2 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Never before have I been summoned by 3 different people. Could have sworn that the dragon balls had a global cooldown of some kind. 

 

As for ram overclocking, primary timings are great, as long as you understand their tradeoffs. When you reach a point to where you need copious amounts of voltage, or you have to lower your clock speed by more than 10% to stabilize them, then it's time to let them rest and look elsewhere. My best advice is: Leave your primary timings at stock JEDEC. Whatever that value is for your memory (DDR4 15-15-15-35, DDR3 9-9-9-27, etc) dial them in, and then dial in the voltage you wish to run 24/7. If you are one of those people that believe VDIMM can kill IMC's, I feel sorry for you, but I can at least give you the values intel recommends. For 24/7 use on Skylake/Kaby Lake's IMC, the max "safe" DDR4 voltage is 1.4125v. The max "safe" DDR3 voltage for Haswell is 1.575 (you will find that your DDR3 XMP's already go beyond this, at 1.65v, and no IMC's have died as a result of this, but what do I know? I am just a random guy on the internet). Dial these values in, and throw as much clock speed at it as you possibly can until you can't post.

 

Once you can no longer post, dial back to the last bootable value, and start testing it. Be sure to raise/lower your VCCIO/VCCSA as you see fit, just avoid going beyond 1.25v each and you will be fine. Once you have stable primary timings and clock speeds, start tinkering with tertiary timings. These are mostly used to obtain what I call "Bandwidth Efficiency". @done12many2 learned this recently, and has gained quite a bit of bandwidth for his kit, while also tremendously lowering his latency. Very proud of him. What this means is, your peak theoretical bandwidth is determined by your clock speeds, but your tertiary timings will dictate exactly how much of that theoretical bandwidth you can use. If your peak bandwidth is say, 50GB/s, but your efficiency is only 80%, you can only leverage 40GB/s. Working on your efficiency, you can achieve up to 99% efficiency (done1's write efficiency is exactly that, 99% of his peak bandwidth is usable). This is why I try to tell people that clock speeds and primary timings are not the be all, end all when it comes to ram speed. You might think your ram is fast since it's technically clocked higher, but if you can only use a fraction of it due to poor tertiary efficiency, you might as well be using a slower kit. Now, some motherboards are extremely good for auto-training of these timings, but even then, they are nowhere near as good as what one can achieve manually.

 

As for that guide, I have not had a break from work (I only got 1 day off in the past 10 days of working, getting hit hard this season) but I'll see if I can't delegate bits and pieces of my information to others, so that they can provide a guide for people. Besides. I don't want to write a memory guide until I can afford a Ryzen rig, so that I can provide information for Ryzen as well. I might buy a cheap Ryzen CPU, an expensive board, and go ham on memory overclocking until I feel comfortable enough to provide that kind of info. 

 

Disclaimer: This is by no means a "guide". This is just my quick and dirty methodology. I'll speak to some people that I trust in order to make a guide happen. It will just take time. 

Thanks!

[dexT]

Yes @MageTank knows what's up. @done12many2 is a baller. Also @Lays is super hardcore.

[done12many2]

15 hours ago, dexT said:

@done12many2 is a baller. 

 

I eat a lot of Ramen noodles and sit in the dark to keep costs down so I can afford parts.