How much heat does overclocked RAM add?

[Ace McPlane]

Hi,

I just enabled XMP profile yesterday and did a stress test that was supposed to be a baseline before I started overclocking my CPU..

I'm really new to overclocking ram.

 

I noticed that my temps were higher than they should be without a CPU overclock enabled.

I mean, I've got a 360 AIO and the temps were in the 70's. 

That's what I'd expect to see with a 120mm radiator.

 

So, does overclocking ram add a lot of heat to your loop or something?

If so, I think I'll manually overclock it, dial back the voltage/frequency and maybe try to get better timings out of this ram instead.

Or is something else going on here?

 

i7 4790k

asus maximus hero vii

corsair vengeance 16 gb ddr3-2400mhz 4x4gb memory at 1.65v

fractal design s36

760w psu

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Overclocking RAM adds very little heat to the system. RAM produces very little heat in the first place. 

[Ebony Falcon]

Yes it does and that's a stupid voltage for ur ram

[Ace McPlane]

Just now, Ebony Falcon said:

Yes it does and that's a stupid voltage for ur ram

That's the voltage it automatically goes to when you enable the XMP profile. That's the ram's stock voltage.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233352

 

I'm definitely going to lower than number though.

My CPU overclock is obviously way more important to me.

I'll try to get something like 2133mhz at 1.55v if I can

 

[Ebony Falcon]

5 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Overclocking RAM adds very little heat to the system. RAM produces very little heat in the first place. 

It's not the physical heat of the ram it's that it pushes the memory controller on the chip that lifts cpu temps

[Ace McPlane]

2 minutes ago, Ebony Falcon said:

It's not the physical heat of the ram it's that it pushes the memory controller on the chip that lifts cpu temps

Yea, that's what I figured.

[Ebony Falcon]

36 minutes ago, stateofpsychosis said:

Yea, that's what I figured.

Not sure about ddr3 as it's been a while but ram oc voltage should be around 1.35 and stock 1.2

[Ace McPlane]

3 minutes ago, Ebony Falcon said:

Not sure about ddr3 as it's been a while but ram oc voltage should be around 1.35 and stock 1.2

Nah, not DDR3.

 

It's typically around 1.5v

[trace6x]

I remember reading that ram heat sinks were a gimmick in the first place, not sure if that's actually true but no I don't think it would affect temperature

[Ace McPlane]

3 minutes ago, trace6x said:

I remember reading that ram heat sinks were a gimmick in the first place, not sure if that's actually true but no I don't think it would affect temperature

We're talking about the heat produced in the CPU from overclocked ram not the ram itself

[Ebony Falcon]

30 minutes ago, trace6x said:

I remember reading that ram heat sinks were a gimmick in the first place, not sure if that's actually true but no I don't think it would affect temperature

See above, xmp pushes memory controller on chip 

[Ebony Falcon]

26 minutes ago, stateofpsychosis said:

We're talking about the heat produced in the CPU from overclocked ram not the ram itself

If I remember correct when I had a 4770k(same cpu) xmp pushed Chip 15 degrees, so I could run burn test at 4.7 under 70 degrees and with xmp getting closer to 90, obvs that's the extream of it with stress testing but normal applications it was still 15 ish hotter and this wa on a 240 rad so ur temps are ok 

[Ace McPlane]

2 minutes ago, Ebony Falcon said:

If I remember correct when I had a 4770k(same cpu) xmp pushed Chip 15 degrees, so I could run burn test at 4.7 under 70 degrees and with xmp getting closer to 90, obvs that's the extream of it with stress testing but normal applications it was still 15 ish hotter and this wa on a 240 rad so ur temps are ok 

Well, there's one thing I'm not getting about overclocking ram from all of the guides I read.

 

Should I be doing it separately from the CPU overclock?

I mean, should I only overclock and stress these one at a time and not both at once?

[Ebony Falcon]

Oc cpu as far as possible with 1.35v 

then add in the memory of not stable with xmp then roll back 100 MHz that's what I did 

[Ace McPlane]

4 minutes ago, Ebony Falcon said:

Oc cpu as far as possible with 1.35v 

then add in the memory of not stable with xmp then roll back 100 MHz that's what I did 

roll back 100mhz on the CPU and leave the memory on XMP?

 

I think I'd rather the extra 100mhz on the CPU.

It wouldn't be too hard to underclock that ram anyways.

It'd just be a matter of lowering that voltage to about 1.55 and the frequency to 2133mhz. I probably wouldn't even need to touch the timings.

Worth a shot I think because undervolting the ram isn't going to hurt it to try.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

 

40 minutes ago, stateofpsychosis said:

It's typically around 1.5v

For standard speeds it is (1333-1600MHz), and for high speed DDR3 1.6-1.65v is also typical.

AS you said before, IMCs generate more heat as you use faster RAM. They will also be harder to keep stable when OCing the CPU, so a stable CPU OC with 1600MHz may not be as stable, and certainly not as cool, once you tune RAM to its XMP (and 2400 is almost the ceiling for DDR3, with very few exceptional kits shipping with a faster XMP).

 

5 minutes ago, stateofpsychosis said:

Should I be doing it separately from the CPU overclock?

I mean, should I only overclock and stress these one at a time and not both at once?

Sort of. You want to keep one of them (typically RAM) fixed while you play with the other, and once you have a satisfactory result, do a final round of tuning with RAM at the desired speed.

Don't know in Haswell, but in AMD that final step often involved messing with the CPU-NB voltage, rather than Vcore.

[Ace McPlane]

For the record, I lowered my ram frequency to 2133, the voltage to 1.55, and haven't touched the timings yet.

I overclocked the CPU to 4.7ghz 1.24v and overclocked the GPU to 1960 (really 2088-2101 in 3dmark results).

It has been passing all of the stress tests and is only like 2 degrees hotter than my OC from before adding this ram.

Thanks for the answers to my noob question folks.

Now it's time to learn what all of those thousands of other settings in this complicated mobo do