How to undervolt ram

[mrscrewu]

I've made a huge mistake, buying without knowing and thinking that the seller might know what he was talking about...
I've bought these things:
Intel i5 6600,
motherboard gigabyte z170m-d3h ddr3
Ram: hyperx 1600ghz ddr3
Corsair h100i gtx
Samsung 850 evo 500gb

After coming home (which is in another country by the way) I started doing some research and I've found that this processor only supports ddr3l/ddr4 (ddr3 running at 1.35v) and I cannot go back to exchange the memory.

I wanted to know if I can undervolt it and how can I do that? Regards

 

[glamdringfh]

It isn't a good idea to try and to run plain DDR3 RAM on a Skylake CPU, it could kill your IMC.

Here's an article from Tom's on this very issue: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/skylake-memory-support,30185.html

Excerpt: "Although it would be nice to use any DDR3 from 1.35 V - 1.65 V, running at these higher voltages could burn out the IMC and kill the processor over time.

Long story short, if you are looking to buy a Skylake platform, make sure you double check the RAM you are buying to avoid having problems down the line. Even if [DDR3] works initially on your system, there is no guarantee that under stress the IMC won't break down and knock your system out of commission."

To ensure the rest of your components stay healthy I'm afraid you'll probably need to buy new RAM. 🙁

 

[beegmouse]

You cannot run 1.5v ddr at 1.35v it won't work.

Even if you go into the bios and manually set the dram voltage lower, the RAM is unlikley to function. If the silicon was good enough to be DDR-L, it would be sold as DDR-L as that is compatible with DDR

Skylakes require DDR-L to function so you should sell what you have and buy the correct RAM.

When you have spent that much on a chip and board, you don't want to risk screwing things up.

 

[nukemaster]

Memory voltage is changed in the bios(this assumes the board starts with 1.35 and your memory is stable enough to get into the bios to make adjustments as needed). You may need to loosen the timings or run a lower speed.

While I agree you should run DDR3l on this systems.

I do NOT agree that DDR3 can not run on 1.35 volts. I have done it on SPD timings not XMP. I have also seen some that did not run at the lower voltage. It is more of a luck of the draw thing.

Before the DDR3l spec was finalized, 1.35 volt memory was also sold under normal DDR3.

 

[mrscrewu]

I know little about this, but I've seen that in the hyperx fury webpage says this: "With voltages as low as 1.35V, it draws less power and generates less heat, while supporting Intel’s new 100 Series chipset." http://www.hyperxgaming.com/us/memory/fury so it means that starts at 1.35v? And then I can go into bios and set the max voltage to that value? Apart from doing that, do I need to lower memory speed? To something like 1333 or is it done automatically when I select the output voltage? Please I need some help in here as you can see I am such a stupid person, and I hate myself for buying things without previous research. Also in Argentina there isn't many options for buying things and it is super expensive that I why I went to a neighbor country to buy these things, That is why I want to solve this situation without buying something else.

 

[nukemaster]

They sell kits at 1.35 and kits at 1.5. Only the 1.35 kits are guaranteed to run on that voltage.

1.5 volt kits would need to be tested to see if they are stable at 1.35 volts. If not, lowering the speed and latency(with latency higher numbers are slower so lower is making larger numbers) numbers may help.

I have no way to say it will or will not work right. I have done it with 1.65 volt memory[Not that this is on my list of good ideas] in the past(down-clocked because the cpu frequency was linked to the memory speed.).