Is it risky to run a 1600 Mhz ram with a sandy bridge processor?

[Sagar_20]

I'm having a Core i5 Sandy bridge processor that is running on a H61 motherboard which only supports a maximum frequency of 1333 Mhz.

I know that a 1600 Mhz memory will be automatically down clocked to 1333 Mhz by the motherboard. But my question is that is there any risk in doing so??

Also, is it the processor or the motherboard that bottle necks the 1600 Mhz Ram??

 

[Justiceinacan]

It's the motherboard that can't support it, that's why it runs slower.

There's no risk in popping in faster RAM over regular RAM last time I checked.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

What board are you running?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

RAM is always advertised at it's XMP speed. XMP is "overclocking"

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/extreme-memory-profile-xmp.html

The SPD on your RAM will have a package of "presets" ... this information usually includes several JEDEC profiles and 1 or mpore XMP profiles and is read by the MoBo / BIOS and the the MoO will usually default to the highest highest JEDEC profile on the SPD. But... they don't want you to "overclock" your RAM w/o you knowing about it (lawyer advice most likely) so iuf you wnat to use the advertised speed , 88you** have to go into BIOS and tell the MoBo to use the XMP profile. of course your MoBo must support this profile so it's a no go.

If you know make and model number of RAM and MoBo you can see if they match.

 

[Tradesman1]

To ansewer your question, NO it won't hurt anything, the BIOS will downclock it to the BIOS defaults and may try to match up the setup in the SPD of the DRAM for 1333, which would be best case scenario, can use free app CPU-Z to check and see what the DRAM is running at in the Memory tab - then flip to the SPD tab check the presets and if there's a better one in the SPD specs, can manually set your DRAM to it