Question Unsure of ram speed to get for older cpu

x=0

Feb 13, 2022
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I have an older i7-4770 cpu which has a supported memory speed of 1600 mhz for ddr3 ram according to the intel website. I currently have 1600 mhz ram with 16gb but I was wondering if it was in any way possible to exceed that limit. Or could I overclock the spped of the ram to something like 2133 mhz? I'm not going to buy a new cpu unless it is impossible for me to get past 1600 mhz.
 

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
What is the make and model of your motherboard? Pass on a link to your existing ram kit.

If you get the B85/H81/H87/H97 chipset boards, they will only go to a max of DDR3-1600Mhz. If you get the Z87/Z97 chipset, you can overclock the memory to higher than 1600MHz but that would be depending on two factors, 1| being if the rams can go there(and are not nitpicky of what board they're in + their advertised for DDR3-2133MHz) and 2| being if the integrated memory controller on your processor can go there as well(silicon lottery).
 
Last edited:

x=0

Feb 13, 2022
4
0
10
What is the make and model of your motherboard? Pass on a link to your existing ram kit.

If you get the B85/H81/H87/H97 chipset boards, they will only go to a max of DDR3-1600Mhz. If you get the Z87/Z97 chipset, you can overclock the memory to higher than 1600MHz but that would be depending on two factors, 1| being if the rams can go there(and are not nitpicky of what board they're in + their advertised for DDR3-2133MHz) and 2| being if the integrated memory controller on your processor can go there as well(silicon lottery).
I have an msi z87-gd65 motherboard with 4 RAM slots. I'm not sure if the memory controller can go above that, which is why I am asking here first. The BIOS in my motherboard has mutiple kinds of options for overclocking different things such as RAM, so I was hoping that I could do that while keeping stability and my data.
 

x=0

Feb 13, 2022
4
0
10
The intel website says the i7 4770 only supports ddr3-1600 or ddr3-1333 so I just want to know if that is a hard limit and if there are any dangers by going to high above it.