[SOLVED] Overclocking Motherboard, Not RAM

[louinal]

I have an ASUS Prime Z390-A mobo with an i7-9700 cpu and Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200MHz DRAM. The mobo specs show memory frequencies up to 4133+ but everything over 2666 is considered overclocked e.g. shown as 3000(OC). I have 2 questions: first, I assume that if I were to run the memory at, say, 3000MHz. it is the motherboard that I'm overclocking, right? That sound obvious but at the same time not somehow and I would like to get a little education on the subject. Second, in the BIOS if I enable X.M.P. it recognizes the RAM as 3200MHZ., but for now I have left it disabled which sets the freq. at 2666MHz. Is it safe to enable X.M.P., or should I go through the steps of bumping up speed and voltage (and maybe bumping down timings) in order to approach the edge of the cliff slowly? Thanks for any advice.
LouInAL

 

[tennis2]

The Ram controller is on the CPU. 3200MHz on Intel CPUs is perfectly safe. Just enable XMP.