Newbie Here

[Dorzaii]

So I was browsing Coolblue.nl (Dutch version of Newegg) and I saw that the 

i7 8700k processor has a memory controller of DDR4-2666. 

So my question was, does that mean that my CPU won't allow more than 2666hz ram? 

Is it stupid to go for DDR4 3200hz ram, or does it not matter at all?

 

Thanks in advance,

Your newbie, Dorzai

 

PS: In the picture you can see what I mean, "Geheugencontroller" means Memory Controller.

[MkaiL]

That's just the default speed. You'll have to enable the xmp profile in your bios to get to 3200mhz.

[minibois]

Anything above that 2666Mhz speed is an overclock done by the motherboard.

If you check the motherboard website you usually see them say something along the lines of: 

Quote

Support memory speed: 2133Mhz, 2400Mhz, 2666Mhz, 2933Mhz (O.C.), etc..  

 

[pstarlord]

When you boot your system into the BIOS, you'd notice that your RAM speed is probably set much less than the actual speed of your RAM.  You can do a very easy overclock to get it up to it's advertised speed.  Like it was mentioned before, the XMP profile is what you use.  For example, my RAM is labeled at 2400, but when I checked the BIOS, the XMP profile had it set to like 1900 or so. (I forget the exact rating) But I just simply pushed it up to 2400 and all bingo. 

 

Now, the question is "does it matter?"  I remember a video that Linus put up a while ago, and the general conclusion was anything around 2400 or faster will get you a more than adequate experience and anything over that won't really make a noticeable impact to a vast majority of people.  Now, if you'd be using a Ryzen CPU, to my understanding, they do tend to be able to take advantage of faster RAM speeds than an Intel CPU.