Overclocking RAM

[Thorbaden]

I have 4x 1gb corsair xms2 ddr800 4-4-4-12 2.1v (manufacturer settings)

i can get them up and beyond 1000mhz at 5-5-5-15 2.1v


my question is i have stock heatspreaders on them, how high should i go in MHZ (without increasing voltage) before i should worry about them overheating? or is any stable clock good as long as i dont increase voltage?

 

[timaahhh]

Increasing the clock speed shortens its life. Increasing the voltage increases the stability but also shortens it life more. Your stock voltage is at 2.1? That seems a bit high... At that voltage you should be able to get up to 1000 mhz with timing adjustments. Btw if you have an Intel based system increasing your memory speed from 800 to 1066 won't make that huge of a difference... The speedup should be faster on an AMD system but I don't think it will be that big anyways.

 

[br3nd064]

If you can still comfortably touch the ram heatsinks, it's probably safe. You can raise the voltage a little, but I'd say keep it under 2.2v. Increasing the ram speed past 800mhz won't make that big of a difference. I'd say run them 1:1 with your cpu and focus on low timings, not higher bandwidth.

 

[mford66215]

1:1 usually does best as I understand it.

 

[iluvgillgill]

2.2v no more on those rams without extra active cooling. as long as it pass blend test for 24hours means its stable.if it overheat the system will crash if it doesnt it means its good to go.

increase wont shorten its life compare to increase voltage.thats why CPU OCer will increase speed then voltage when they HAVE to.

 

[Thorbaden]

yeah its near impossible for me to run at 1:1 ratio. ide have to underclock my ram which hits performance alot (ive benchmarked it).

2.1v is the manufacturer reccommended setting. im able to pass memtest86 fully with it clocked at 5-4-4-12 at 1000mhz. higher than that (1037 is next step up) and it gets errors. highest i can overclock it with 4-4-4-12 timings is around 830mhz or so. couldnt lower timings much less that that either.

currently my 8400 fsb is overclocked to 389mhz (3.5ghz stock voltage) so it makes it near impossible to get a 1:1 ratio even with overclocking fsb and underclocking ram. ive never been able to obtain an fsb of 400 stable and error free even with lots of voltage increases so its not in my best interest to overclock that much.

as for touching the arm heatsinks. i havent tried that but ill pass. last time i did that it was pretty hot but not enough to burn my skin.


as for performance.. well i notice about a 3ish fps increase when overclocking from 800mhz to 1000mhz which is decent enough for me to keep it.

 

[Priv]

Lower your multiplier then, so run 400x8 maybe, and then overclock further. Also I expect you can get more than 830MHz on your ram modules with C4. Otherwise you would not be able to run 5-4-4-12 at 1000.

 

[Thorbaden]

yeah i tried 830mhz, was able to boot, then tried 883 mhz i think and failed to post. so its in there somewhere. ill test that once i finish running prime 95 and benchmark it at 1000mhz.

so you think lowering multiplier will do the trick? ill have to try that as well.

ok maybe i was wrong about increasing fps in some games. jsut did crysis benchmarks (the ones in teh bin32). and only scored .2fps higher than before. before my cpu was 3.38ghz memory 800mhz 4-4-4-12. now for that benchmark it is 3.5ghz 1000mhz 5-4-4-12. so i guess ill be going back to 4-4-4-12 timing.

 

[Thorbaden]

unable to get a decent ram overclock using 4-4-4-12 timing when my cpu is at 3.5ghz as the ram speed is adjusted too high or too low regardless of multiplier. was unable to keep a 830mhz ram at 4-4-4-12 stable and would get errors in prime95 within seconds. trying to get again a 400fsb by overclock and adjusting voltages. so far upping the nb voltage to 1.28 from 1.22 or something and vcore up by .0750v 1.27v under load is letting me run prime95 with no errors (only 30 mins in but looks better than before.)

 

[Priv]

Let it run for a night or even longer then and you'll see if it's stable .