I5 8600k supporting ram

[shivatinku95]

Hello sir
Planning to build a pc with 8600k. Can i use a ddr4 3000mhz ram.

As in intel website specification says "memory type DDR4 - 2666"

Thank-you

 

[vMax]

Yes it is supported for DDR4 3000MHz and no problems at all....The 2666 spec is what Intel have validated it at and anything above that is overclocked by the manufacturers. All you have to do when installing the DDR4 3000MHz RAM is go into BIOS and then to the XMP setting and change it to 3000MHz...

This is absolutely no problems and standard and works with no issues whatsoever all the way to DDR4 4000 and above. I also have DDR4 3000MHz ram in my 8700K system.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Eh, that's not necessarily true. ALL memory speeds specificied as "OC" may require either a bump in memory voltage or at least a slight CPU overclock, or both, to get working at the desired OC or XMP profile speed. Only the speed specified by Intel for that CPU, in this case, 2666mhz, is guaranteed to work without having to do anything more than set the speed in the bios.

Even then, you will have to manually set the speed to 2666mhz, NOT set the XMP profile, because if you set the XMP profile to enable it will want to run at 3000mhz and may require additional adjustments and tuning as I mentioned.

The more memory modules that are installed, ie, 2 instead of 1, 4 instead of 2, the more this becomes a possibility or even a probability. A lot depends on the CPU being used. An i7 with a high base clock is probably a lot more likely to work without issues at the XMP profile speed, if that speed is higher than any of the speeds supported by the CPU by default without an "OC" than one that is clocked lower and does not have the additional boost to the memory controller.

An i5-8600k for example, probably isn't going to support as high of memory clocks by default as an i7-8700k, without making some changes to either memory voltage or base clock speed. Even 100mhz can sometimes make a difference. And as little as .005v memory voltage can be a factor.

And then in some cases, depending also on the particular motherboard, none of this might be necessary. Every hardware configuration CAN and sometimes WILL, be different.

 

[vMax]

Okay, I am in a bit of stun, as I have not come across this before. I have had the 8600K and now the 8700K and am using DDR4 3000 all I have ever had to do was go into the BIOS and turn XMP on and the memory would run at 3000Mhz. Never any other issues...Provided his motherboard supports DDR4 speeds upto and beyond DDR4 3000 there should be no issues whatsoever.

Though I am happy to be educated better on this.

A little blurb from a review site on Coffee Lake:

Apart from the two extra cores, the new "Coffee Lake" silicon, on which these chips are based, shares quite a bit of platform-related machinery with its predecessor, the "Kaby Lake" silicon. The integrated graphics core is practically carried over at the silicon level, with minor performance increases; and so are other uncore components, such as the system agent. The system agent (integrated northbridge) consists of the dual-channel DDR4 integrated memory controller, display I/O, and PCI-Express root complex. The 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" processors support Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) 2.0, which means high clock-speed memory kits designed for 6th and 7th generation Core processors should support one-click memory overclocking on even these new chips. You simply enable "XMP" over your UEFI setup program's home screen and all the advertised speeds and timings of your memory kit are enabled.

Unlike on the AMD Ryzen processor, where the memory clock is synced with the clock-speed of the InfinityFabric interconnect, translating into significant performance increases with memory overclocking, performance-increases on Intel chips aren't as pronounced. There should still be performance gains to be had when going up from the failsafe 2133 MHz, up to the reference 2666 MHz and beyond.

We paired our Core i7-8700K processor with G.SKILL Trident Z 3866 MHz memory on the Gigabyte AORUS Z370 Ultra Gaming and tried out a large number of memory settings, including DDR4-2133 (JEDEC failsafe), DDR4-2400 ("Kaby Lake" reference), DDR4-2666 ("Coffee Lake" reference); and overclocked speeds of DDR4-2800, DDR4-3000, DDR4-3200, DDR4-3600, DDR4-3866, and DDR4-4000.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Not sure how that blurb is relevant to this conversation, but I assure you 100% that what I posted previously is completely accurate. The fact that you haven't had an issue running DDR4 3000mhz memory using the XMP profile without having to make any other changes, does not mean hundreds of other users, or more, have not had to.

Also, to complicate things further, the fact that your system will POST and boot into Windows, and does not seem on the surface to be having any issues with the configuration, does not mean that the configuration is stable. I've seen many systems that would do that but would not make it through two full passes of Memtest86, or as few as four hours of Prime95 version 26.6 Blend mode testing, with the XMP profile enabled and no other changes made to the CPU or Memory configuration, without errors.

In SOME cases, even at the XMP profile, SEEMING to be ok, there are instability issues creating micro-errors and a slight bump in memory voltage is necessary in order to assure that the memory configuration is stable.

You can't see water doing damage to the foundation of your house when you are throwing a barbecue in the backyard, but I assure you that for most people unless they've taken steps to seal the outside boundary of it or even install a drainage system, there is usually incremental rot happening after every hard rain. This is not much different. Just because you don't "see" it, doesn't mean it's not there.

 

[vMax]

So just to be clear, even if the motherboard states it will support DDR4 speeds above 2666 i.e. 3000, 3200, 3400 and on in its QVL list for supported RAM, I am still not safe?

Why would Corsair, G Skill, Team Group, Kingston et all even sell RAM above spec with warranties if there was an issue, seems like this must be a very rare issue provided you are running the RAM at the right speeds that the RAM maker has made it for and that the motherboard has said is okay...

I mean, they RAM suppliers/manufactures must have tested the RAM at those speeds against a variety of manufacturer motherboards...Seems like they would be asking for trouble if Systems were unstable due to their RAM.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So just to be clear, even if the motherboard states it will support DDR4 speeds above 2666 i.e. 3000, 3200, 3400 and on in its QVL list for supported RAM, I am still not safe?

Possibly. Not every case is the same, so it's highly recommended that ANY time you run memory at speeds, voltages or timings that are different from the default Serial presence detect speed or SPD, which for DDR4 is 2133mhz, that you run Memtest, and if you really want to be sure it's all good, Blend mode in Prime95 version 26.6, for a period of time to ensure that on YOUR system, that speed, that voltage and those timings, are stable.

A given motherboard might support ten or more different processors. Not all of them are going to react the exact same way to memory configurations, or other things for that matter. Every motherboard, every processor and every system, is different, even if they are MOSTLY the same.

Why would Corsair, G Skill, Team Group, Kingston et all even sell RAM above spec with warranties if there was an issue, seems like this must be a very rare issue provided you are running the RAM at the right speeds that the RAM maker has made it for and that the motherboard has said is okay...

Because they can. 90% of users won't even know that they need to configure the memory to run at speeds other than the default speed, and the rest will either already know how to do this or will figure it out. I assure you that the speeds listed are not guaranteed. Ever. Ever. Ever.

In most cases, the advertised speeds are even for only two modules. There are TONS of cases where four DDR4 3600mhz modules won't ALL run at that speed, but two will, and might even overclock higher than that. And yet won't run at that speed with four modules regardless of what you do. Seems like you are not terribly aware of some of the specifics regarding memory considerations, so you might want to take a read of these highly informative, but relatively basic, write ups. I can provide far more technical documentations that you should know if you care to go much further into things, if you wish.


https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ddr-dram-myths,4155.html#p1


https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ddr3-dram-faq,review-33220.html




Also, these are micro-errors I'm talking about. Not blue screens or shut downs. Most people won't even know it's happening unless they specifically test for it, or later on the system starts having problems after working fine for a long time due to the micro-errors cumulatively being introduced into the OS, applications and user files without them even realizing it is happening. It's called slow corruption, and it can happen even with stock configurations if there are problems with the memory that are not bad enough to trigger obvious error situations like a blue screen.

A wrong zero here. Two many ones there. Pretty soon the whole works is corrupted, and cannot be fixed except by starting over again.

 

[vMax]

Thanks darkbreeze, I have learned something new today and will keep this in mind....

 

[Darkbreeze]

Assuredly, it is my pleasure if or when I can help. Fortunately, I think all of this is relevant to the OP's question, and by now should have been thoroughly answered.