Question XMP question

[Min91]

Hello, i think i made mistake by buying - MSI PRO H610M-E motherboard,
i have DDR5 5600mhz cl 40 , 16gb x2 ram sticks, and 12100f CPU, motherboard supports XMP overclocking but CPU says max DDR5 4800mhz which makes no sense as i understand base frequency of DDR5 is 4800 so why even bother with XMP,
i read online that h610 mobo can't overclock ram more than CPU max frequency, so am i stuck with ddr5 4800mhz even if i have 5600mhz? maybe i don't understand something, if so i need to buy another mobo as having more powerful rams but not using full potencial makes no sense, Thank you !

 

[CountMike]

Hello, i think i made mistake by buying - MSI PRO H610M-E motherboard,
i have DDR5 5600mhz cl 40 , 16gb x2 ram sticks, and 12100f CPU, motherboard supports XMP overclocking but CPU says max DDR5 4800mhz which makes no sense as i understand base frequency of DDR5 is 4800 so why even bother with XMP,
i read online that h610 mobo can't overclock ram more than CPU max frequency, so am i stuck with ddr5 4800mhz even if i have 5600mhz? maybe i don't understand something, if so i need to buy another mobo as having more powerful rams but not using full potencial makes no sense, Thank you !

IMC, (Internal Memory Controller) is in the CPU so it depends on CPU if it can be overclocked or/and how much.

 

[Misgar]

Hello, i think i made mistake by buying - MSI PRO H610M-E motherboard,

According to this web site, the H610M-E takes DDR4 RAM, not DDR5.
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-H610M-E-DDR4/support#mem

I'm not sure how you plan to install DDR5 RAM in a DDR4 motherboard. Perhaps I'm mistaken?

CPU-World shows the 12100F supports either DDR4-3200 or DDR5-4800
https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i3/Intel-Core i3 i3-12100F.html

Memory controller

The number of controllers: 2 Memory channels (per controller): 2 Memory channels (total): 4 Supported memory: DDR4-3200, DDR5-4800

If you buy a DDR4 mobo, you'll need DDR4 RAM, If you buy a DDR5 mobo, you'll need DDR5. At the moment it appears you have a DDR4 mobo and DDR5 RAM, which are incompatible.

motherboard supports XMP overclocking but CPU says max DDR5 4800mhz which makes no sense as i understand base frequency of DDR5 is 4800 so why even bother with XMP,

Although Intel guarantees their CPUs will work at a certain maximum memory clock rate (e.g. DDR5-4800) that doesn't stop you from trying to overclock the Integrated Memory Controller using XMP settings held in SPD on the DIMM. All it means is Intel is not prepared to guarantee faster speeds. You take pot luck with the Silicon Lottery. Of course you'll need the correct combination of CPU, RAM and mobo to attempt XMP overclocking.

This reviewer ran their memory at (close to) DDR5-5900 on an i3-12100F using BCLK overclock.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i3-12100f/22.html

N.B. Without a K suffix, the 12100F has a locked multiplier, so BCLK overclocking is used instead. It just makes life more interesting (tricky).

With BCLK overclocking, things are a bit more complicated than with multiplier overclocking. While the multiplier will only affect the CPU's operating frequency, BCLK is also fed into the memory controller, so raising the BCLK will also overclock the memory. It might also affect other things, like PCIe speed, but all motherboards with BCLK overclocking support also support setting these secondary clocks to a fixed value. As an example, in order to keep the memory at the original frequency when overclocking the BCLK by 20%, you would pick a 20% lower memory setting in BIOS. Due to the multipliers not supporting fractions, the values here will often not line up perfectly; in my example, I ran the memory at DDR5-5900 MHz instead of DDR5-6000—a 1.6% difference, it's not a big deal.

Note the CPU-Z memory clock frequency of 2946.9MHz gives a Double Data Rate of 5893.8MT/s (which the reviewer rounded up to 5900MT/s). This is considerably faster than the guaranteed rate of 4800MT/s, for which the memory clock frequency would be 2400MHz.