Ram OC

Ash_

Master Poster
Not sure if you can OC ram whilst under pcs warranty but... it’s literally free performance, especially at 1080p.

I’ve never OC’d ram before, but i just got some new ram and the box states ‘designed for extreme overclocking’. It’s already solid @ 3600mhz cl16 (16-19-19-36).

Anyone else dabbled in ram oc?
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Not sure if you can OC ram whilst under pcs warranty but... it’s literally free performance, especially at 1080p.

I’ve never OC’d ram before, but i just got some new ram and the box states ‘designed for extreme overclocking’. It’s already solid @ 3600mhz cl16 (16-19-19-36).

Anyone else dabbled in ram oc?
It's very easy these days as it's done for you with the DOCP/XMP profiles baked into the board, you just try them until you reach instability and then roll back.

Depending on which board you've got will depend on if overclocking the RAM is potentially possible, a lower end board isn't designed for overclocking.

When overclocking RAM, you're actually overclocking the CPU memory controller as well as the RAM voltages.

It's allowed by PCS warranty terms so long as you don't damage the CPU in the process.
 

Ash_

Master Poster
So in theory, anyone that buys the 3200mhz ram, could just clock it to 3600mhz anyway, or adjust their latency.
 

NoddyPirate

Grand Master
I know this an old(ish) thread - but just to add - my PRIME B550 PLUS doesn't allow for any alternative DOCP profile other than the one that is associated with the installed RAM. So I could not simply select an alternative profile.

I was however still able to OC my RAM from 3000 to 3200 MHz by manually configuring it through BIOS. All Windows Memory Diagnostics and MemTest tests (about 4 hours worth!) are error free and a big performance hike (around 7%) for the entire system. The infinity fabric clock must be synchornised with the memory speed so it actually provided a small CPU perfromance boost also it seems.

Pushing it 3266 MHz was also stable and error free, but performance showed a slight decline (down 3% from 3200) so I reverted to 3200 again.

As long as you don't apply a silly voltage, the worst that can happen it seems is instability or failure to boot, which would require a CMOS reset and a return to default BIOS settings to get up and running again. So I would strongly recommend that you take note of your non-default BIOS settings before trying it - or you'll have no idea what settings you've lost if the worst comes to the worst....
 

Ash_

Master Poster
Yeah i clocked my ram manually, but i didn’t touch the voltage. I tried to get CL14 but it caused a massive performance decline. 3000 -> 3200 will cause a massive improvement. Once you’re over 3200mhz, you’re probably best off targeting the CAS latency instead.

Corsair ram is designed to be overclocked, the box literally says it. If you can get a stable OC without voltage changes, it is great to do.
 
D

Deleted member 17413

Guest
What would you say the odds were on trying it on 3600MMHz RAM to push a little towards the magic 3733MHz number with AMD? (or 3000 series ones at least).

Ive never overclocked RAM before, but I was curious to try. I dont think I would manage to reach 3733MHz (I remember a past conversation where I was told it would be far easier to take 4000MHz and set it to 3733MHz) but if you're getting that much uplift I would think there would still be a little in mine, just perhaps not as much?
 
D

Deleted member 17413

Guest
Yeah i clocked my ram manually, but i didn’t touch the voltage. I tried to get CL14 but it caused a massive performance decline. 3000 -> 3200 will cause a massive improvement. Once you’re over 3200mhz, you’re probably best off targeting the CAS latency instead.

Corsair ram is designed to be overclocked, the box literally says it. If you can get a stable OC without voltage changes, it is great to do.
So if I have CL18 3600MHz, my best bet would be to try and run as CL16 3600MHz?
 

Ash_

Master Poster
So if I have CL18 3600MHz, my best bet would be to try and run as CL16 3600MHz?
4000 won’t really see a performance improvement over 3600 on gaming etc, CAS latency improvement would be better. If your ram is 3600CL18, it should really be able to clock to 3600CL16, even without a voltage change.
 

NoddyPirate

Grand Master
The percentage gains are obviously greater for the same MHz increase when you're starting form a lower starting point. I used DRAM Calculator for Ryzen - it took a bit to figure out how to use it, but it bascially recommends the settings to use for your preferred speed. It hasn't yet been updated for Zen 3 CPU's or Motherboards, but all the info I could find said it would still work without issue - which it did.

I had to use Thainphoon to grab all the various settings on my DIMMs, then import those into the DRAM Calculator so it could recommend settings for my chosen speed.

In all I had to change about 25 settings or so of the 30+ that the calculator recommended:

1617565768808.png


The max infinity fabric clock setting that seems to avoid issue for the majority - from everything I have read - is 1900 MHz. So that means anything more than 3800 MHz is unlikely to work well, if at all. Also anything less than 1.40 V for XMP or DOCP RAM is widley considered safe.....

More info here if you want - Overclocking with DRAM Calculator
 

Ash_

Master Poster
I can’t remember how many settings etc i changed, but i’m looking in my bios now and i have the following timings:
Command Rate: 1
tCL: 15
tRCDRD: 19
tRCDWR: 15
tRP: 16
tRAS: 36
Voltage: 1.38V
So i think that is 15-15-16-36 when you see it advertised and it started as 16-19-19-38 or something.
 

NoddyPirate

Grand Master
I can’t remember how many settings etc i changed, but i’m looking in my bios now and i have the following timings:
Command Rate: 1
tCL: 15
tRCDRD: 19
tRCDWR: 15
tRP: 16
tRAS: 36
Voltage: 1.38V
Is it Corsair Vengeance? And what was the out of box speed?
 

NoddyPirate

Grand Master
Yeah, i just added the original specs. It’s new corsair ram.
And what was the 'purchased' speed before you OC'd it?

Mine was 16-20-20-38 and is now 16-20-20-40. I might twiddle with the CL, but I'll need to go back into BIOS and get the list of all the stuff I've changed first! It would break my heart to try to remember everything off the top of my head! :D
 

Ash_

Master Poster

Ash_

Master Poster
Super - thanks. And sorry for the extra questions - what have you it at now?
3600CL15. I tried for 14, but it lowered performance, i guess if i invested time and changed voltages etc, i could get CL14 - but verifying ram OC’s takes like 4 hours a time 🤣🤣
 

NoddyPirate

Grand Master
3600CL15. I tried for 14, but it lowered performance, i guess if i invested time and changed voltages etc, i could get CL14 - but verifying ram OC’s takes like 4 hours a time 🤣🤣
Yes exactly! You need patience that's for sure!!!

I wonder now if my attempt at 3266 wasn't great because the latency was too low. Of course the problem is that increasing the speed, but increasing the latency at the same time can mean the same or worse performance anyway.... I probably should quit while I'm ahead!!

Interesting article from Corsair - just found it after seeing you say that Corsair describe their RAM as deisgned for overclocking:

Corsair RAM Overclocks

It's just like CPU overclocking really. Everything has a margin built in to ensure that you will get the advertised performance. Overclocking is just the process of trying to find out how much margin your particular copy has to spare - then backing off a bit from there! As long as you set a sensible limit on voltages and don't exceed them, no matter what the temptation, then I wouldn't expect too much trouble - other than a crashed system, or 4 hours of testing to find you have to reset it all of course!!!

Speaking of temptation - I said to myself I wasn't going above 1.40 V under any circumstances. Then DRAM Calculator said I could get to 3400 MHz - a 13% improvement - with the same latency - if I'd only go up to 1.420 V.

I spent quite a while looking like this - 🤔 - before I said no!!
 
Last edited:

Ash_

Master Poster
Yes exactly! You need patience that's for sure!!!

I wonder now if my attempt at 3266 wasn't great because the latency was too low. Of course the problem is that increasing the speed, but increasing the latency at the same time can mean the same or worse performance anyway.... I probably should quit while I'm ahead!!

Interesting article from Corsair - just found it after seeing you say that Corsair describe their RAM as deisgned for overclocking:

Corsair RAM Overclocks

It's just like CPU overclocking really. Everything has a margin built in to ensure that you will get the advertised performance. Overclocking is just the process of trying to find out how much margin your particular copy has to spare - then backing off a bit from there! As long as you set a sensible limit on voltages and don't exceed them, no matter what the temptation, then I wouldn't expect too much trouble - other a crashed system, of 4 hours of testing to find you have to reset it all of course!!!

Speaking of temptation - I said to myself I wasn't going above 1.40 V under any circumstances. Then DRAM Calculator said I could get to 3400 MHz - a 13% improvement - with the same latency - if I'd only go up to 1.420 V.

I spent quite a while looking like this - 🤔 - before I said no!!
For gaming, anything over 3200mhz i’d say should be fine and trying to lower the latency is better.

I saw someone with a 10850k/3090 trying to get insane fps on Valorent or something, but had the same fps (180) as 9900k/2080 and couldn’t understand it. His old ram was 2400mhz and new ram was... 4400mhz but the latency was like 26. He clocked it to 3800CL16 or something and doubled 1080p fps.

My motherboard is designed for OC’ing also, so it sets the voltage etc itself and if the clock goes bad, after 2 failed boots, it will reset the bios itself. I really can’t understand why PCS doesn’t add the MSI boards and get rid of the Gigabyte ones.
 

NoddyPirate

Grand Master
For gaming, anything over 3200mhz i’d say should be fine and trying to lower the latency is better.

I saw someone with a 10850k/3090 trying to get insane fps on Valorent or something, but had the same fps (180) as 9900k/2080 and couldn’t understand it. His old ram was 2400mhz and new ram was... 4400mhz but the latency was like 26. He clocked it to 3800CL16 or something and doubled 1080p fps.

My motherboard is designed for OC’ing also, so it sets the voltage etc itself and if the clock goes bad, after 2 failed boots, it will reset the bios itself. I really can’t understand why PCS doesn’t add the MSI boards and get rid of the Gigabyte ones.
Wow - that's really does show the value of lower latency!

I am surprised to see that the overclock gave me a huge boost in memory benchmarks, but also a visible improvement in my heavy Lightroom workloads. Exporting large numbers of images or doing photomerges sees a clear 7% reduction in time taken. But then Lightroom is an utter RAM hog!

Nice when it's at more or less no cost - in the short to medium term at least......
 
Top