[SOLVED] Voltage when selecting RAM

[spoofer2]

How does voltage factor in when selecting RAM? Is it more important than latency if I plan on overclocking? If I do plan on overclocking is low voltage or high voltage preferred? (Out of the box) Thanks

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

most RAM takes a bit of voltage increase with every bit of speed increase. and at a point you would usually have to also raise timings to match the higher overclock. with DDR4 memory it is better to have the lower timings than a slightly higher clock speed so you may just be losing performance by going through this.

you would be better off just spending a bit more for faster RAM with lower timings than going through the overclocking process for the slight gain you may get.

 

[Third-Eye]

How does voltage factor in when selecting RAM? Is it more important than latency if I plan on overclocking? If I do plan on overclocking is low voltage or high voltage preferred? (Out of the box) Thanks

Expect any kit with speeds higher than 2666Mhz to require more than the JEDEC standard 1.2v. Most kits from 2933 to 4000Mhz will require 1.35v. Higher speeds like 4133Mhz and higher will probably require 1.37-1.45v. Manually tightening timings and increasing speeds may require more voltage on lower quality memory kits. 1.45v is just about the safest maximum most people will ever come close to for daily use.

 

[spoofer2]

Does lower voltage mean more headroom for overclocking? Does higher voltage mean it's already overclock out of the box?

If I had to choose between two kits that had equal speed and latency, would I want the one with lower voltage or higher voltage?

 

[Endre]

How does voltage factor in when selecting RAM? Is it more important than latency if I plan on overclocking? If I do plan on overclocking is low voltage or high voltage preferred? (Out of the box) Thanks

Please keep in mind that overclocking your RAM might lead to instabilities in the future, while the gains are very small, especially if you’re on an Intel platform.
Enabling XMP profiles should be the “safer” options, but sometimes even that leads to errors.

 

[Third-Eye]

Does lower voltage mean more headroom for overclocking? Does higher voltage mean it's already overclock out of the box?

If I had to choose between two kits that had equal speed and latency, would I want the one with lower voltage or higher voltage?

Memory modules are almost never automatically overclocked when installed. You usually have to manually set the advertised speed, timings and voltage if the motherboard supports memory overclocking or use an XMP setting that is supported by the motherboard and CPU.

Depending on the price of the memory kits, it's usually better to get the memory kit that requires lower voltage for the same speed and timings, because the higher voltage kit likely has lower quality ram chips.