If I have a CPU that says it only support up to 1600 MHz ram speed, will I benefit in anyway if I buy, say... 2400 MHz ram?

[Ro5bert]

My motherboard can support up to 3100 MHz ram, so I fine in that department. What I wondering is if it matters if I exceed the ram speed limit on my CPU. If I were to buy 2400 MHz ram, would it just only use the ram up to 1600 MHz and just be a waste of my money for buying better ram, or will it actually use all of the ram and I would benefit from it. Please help, I've been looking everywhere for an answer for this and I can't find one. Thanks

 

[misfitkid86]

My motherboard can support up to 3100 MHz ram, so I fine in that department. What I wondering is if it matters if I exceed the ram speed limit on my CPU. If I were to buy 2400 MHz ram, would it just only use the ram up to 1600 MHz and just be a waste of my money for buying better ram, or will it actually use all of the ram and I would benefit from it. Please help, I've been looking everywhere for an answer for this and I can't find one. Thanks

no it's saying that your motherboard supports up to a speed of 3100. your cpu won't make a difference. buy what you want. just make sure it's ddr3

 

[Ro5bert]

My motherboard can support up to 3100 MHz ram, so I fine in that department. What I wondering is if it matters if I exceed the ram speed limit on my CPU. If I were to buy 2400 MHz ram, would it just only use the ram up to 1600 MHz and just be a waste of my money for buying better ram, or will it actually use all of the ram and I would benefit from it. Please help, I've been looking everywhere for an answer for this and I can't find one. Thanks

no it's saying that your motherboard supports up to a speed of 3100. your cpu won't make a difference. buy what you want. just make sure it's ddr3

No, but it says on my Intel website on my CPU that the "memory types" are DDR3 1333 MHz/1600 MHz. Thanks for responding so fast

 

[misfitkid86]

My motherboard can support up to 3100 MHz ram, so I fine in that department. What I wondering is if it matters if I exceed the ram speed limit on my CPU. If I were to buy 2400 MHz ram, would it just only use the ram up to 1600 MHz and just be a waste of my money for buying better ram, or will it actually use all of the ram and I would benefit from it. Please help, I've been looking everywhere for an answer for this and I can't find one. Thanks

no it's saying that your motherboard supports up to a speed of 3100. your cpu won't make a difference. buy what you want. just make sure it's ddr3

No, but it says on my Intel website on my CPU that the "memory types" are DDR3 1333 MHz/1600 MHz. Thanks for responding so fast

sure, but it really comes down to what your motherboard and chipset can use. and 99% of the stuff for desktops on newegg or others will work.

 

[Luka Prebil Grintal]

it will initially run in 1600 mode. you have to enable XMP in the UEFI and itll boost it to 2400. then you can play with the latences some to make it even faster

 

[Ro5bert]

My motherboard can support up to 3100 MHz ram, so I fine in that department. What I wondering is if it matters if I exceed the ram speed limit on my CPU. If I were to buy 2400 MHz ram, would it just only use the ram up to 1600 MHz and just be a waste of my money for buying better ram, or will it actually use all of the ram and I would benefit from it. Please help, I've been looking everywhere for an answer for this and I can't find one. Thanks

no it's saying that your motherboard supports up to a speed of 3100. your cpu won't make a difference. buy what you want. just make sure it's ddr3

No, but it says on my Intel website on my CPU that the "memory types" are DDR3 1333 MHz/1600 MHz. Thanks for responding so fast

sure, but it really comes down to what your motherboard and chipset can use. and 99% of the stuff for desktops on newegg or others will work.

I know it'll work, but what I want to know is if I'll benefit from it. Will it just run at 1600 (the CPU's max supported, which is a intel i7 4770k btw), or will it run at 2400 (that is if I were to buy 2400 MHz ram for it). Btw I'm pretty sure the motherboard is out of the equation at this point, I'm not worried about it, I know it'll handle the ram just fine.

 

[Som3one]

The 1600 is the Intel specification for the chipset.
You can run your RAM at 2400 and benefit from it, yes. However you would be running it "overclocked".
Which means everything over 1600 could - in theory - lead to instability. In reality you are usually fine with running your RAM at 2400 or 2600.

If and how much you would benefit from faster RAM depends on what you are going to use it for.

 

[Ro5bert]

The 1600 is the Intel specification for the chipset.
You can run your RAM at 2400 and benefit from it, yes. However you would be running it "overclocked".
Which means everything over 1600 could - in theory - lead to instability. In reality you are usually fine with running your RAM at 2400 or 2600.

If and how much you would benefit from faster RAM depends on what you are going to use it for.

So, you're saying that the "1600 MHz" thing intel said is basically a recommendation for max ram speed?

 

[Luka Prebil Grintal]

yes. its not that much of a rule, but they just rate their CPUs to be stable with 1600. this doesnt mean they wont be stable with 3000mhz though.

 

[Som3one]

What he said.

What Intel did is basically saying "If you run our CPUs at stock speeds, we guarantee your system is stable with 1600 RAM."
However, I recently saw an interview with JJ from Asus and he said that he has been told by Intel techies that they would have been ok with recommending up to 2800 RAM, too.

 

[Ro5bert]

yes. its not that much of a rule, but they just rate their CPUs to be stable with 1600. this doesnt mean they wont be stable with 3000mhz though.

Ah, thank you! That clarified that a lot

 

[Luka Prebil Grintal]

no problem, always happy to help on the stuff i know