DDR5 sweet spot on Z790 ?

digitaldreams

digitaldreams

digitaldreams

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Currently running 'sweet spot' DDR4 3600 well on a Z690 motherboard that claims to 'support' 3200. Memory that was recommended by OC sales at the time of purchase.... I'm now considering moving to a new Z790 so I can use my old board to upgrade another pc. These boards claim 'support' for DDR5 5600 yet I'm of course thinking the 'sweet spot' might be something higher like 6000 ??
 
digitaldreams said:
Currently running 'sweet spot' DDR4 3600 well on a Z690 motherboard that claims to 'support' 3200. Memory that was recommended by OC sales at the time of purchase.... I'm now considering moving to a new Z790 so I can use my old board to upgrade another pc. These boards claim 'support' for DDR5 5600 yet I'm of course thinking the 'sweet spot' might be something higher like 6000 ??
Click to expand...
youtu.be

What DDR5 to buy November 2022

My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/buildzoidTeespring: https://teespring.com/stores/actually-hardcore-overclockingBandcamp: https://machineforscreams.bandca...
youtu.be youtu.be

6800 CL34
 
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I've gone for 6000 CL32, would have gone for CL30 but wasn't anything I wanted at the kind of price I was feeling like spending in stock at the time I bought.
 
I'm running 6200mhz on my DDR5 2 stick 32gb kit which was a 5600mhz out of the box. Fine tuned timings to 6200mhz and its quite abit faster, i got 6400mhz working but then a bios update actually made it worse so im stuck with 6200mhz now on my Z690-I Asus board.
 
Jay85 said:
I'm running 6200mhz on my DDR5 2 stick 32gb kit which was a 5600mhz out of the box. Fine tuned timings to 6200mhz and its quite abit faster, i got 6400mhz working but then a bios update actually made it worse so im stuck with 6200mhz now on my Z690-I Asus board.
Click to expand...
Buildzoid has said much better DDR5 performance is when you tighten the secondary and tertiary timings.

I should probably do the same with my kit of DDR4 RAM but I have Samsung 16gig B die chips and they do not tighten by much more than 1 CL so it makes it very difficult as the system then just won’t POST.

Half of me wants to move to a DDR5 setup just to play around with Hynix M die/A die chips.
 
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Seems to be dependent on the memory controller of the CPU. 90+% of Intel CPU should be able to do 6800 without much issue. AMD is much lower at around 6000

It also depends on the chipset that the manufacturer uses. The one you're looking for is SK Hynix chips. As they can overclock higher than the other makes like Micron and Samsung. You'll have to do your research but any ram over 6400 would most likely be Hynix. Corsair and G.SKILL are good bets, but it is a lottery so there's no guarantee. If you're lucky then you can try to push those chips to 7200. But again, you're playing the silicon lottery not just the motherboard and ram, but with the CPU as well
 
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JollyJamma said:
Buildzoid has said much better DDR5 performance is when you tighten the secondary and tertiary timings.

I should probably do the same with my kit of DDR4 RAM but I have Samsung 16gig B die chips and they do not tighten by much more than 1 CL so it makes it very difficult as the system then just won’t POST.

Half of me wants to move to a DDR5 setup just to play around with Hynix M die/A die chips.
Click to expand...


Yep its 100% true, you can only take it so far with speed of the dimms but if you tighten the timings you'll see when benching the improvements are there. I managed to tighten them slightly but not by much but more importantly i got the gearing down to 1T, default is 2 i think.

For transparency i used this ram which i believe is samsung bdie so not the best but more than capable.

Corsair Vengeance Black 32GB 5600MHz DDR5 Memory Kit - 36-36-36-76​


I'm not actually sure if my default kit which was an early adopter kit is actually those speeds but im gonna assume it is for now.

My tuned settings are here:

MC voltage: 1.3v
Dram VDD voltage: 1.435v
Dram VDDQ voltage: 1.435v
Dram VDD switching freq: 1.5v
Dram VDDQ switching freq: 1.5v


 
robgmun said:
Seems to be dependent on the memory controller of the CPU. 90+% of Intel CPU should be able to do 6800 without much issue. AMD is much lower at around 6000

It also depends on the chipset that the manufacturer uses. The one you're looking for is SK Hynix chips. As they can overclock higher than the other makes like Micron and Samsung. You'll have to do your research but any ram over 6400 would most likely be Hynix. Corsair and G.SKILL are good bets, but it is a lottery so there's no guarantee. If you're lucky then you can try to push those chips to 7200. But again, you're playing the silicon lottery not just the motherboard and ram, but with the CPU as well
Click to expand...


This seems to be it, though its also board dependent. Like my Z690-i board is only meant to support upto 6400mhz OC but i've seen people hit 7k+ on this board without issue so its definitely more cpu dependent.
 
Jay85 said:
Yep its 100% true, you can only take it so far with speed of the dimms but if you tighten the timings you'll see when benching the improvements are there. I managed to tighten them slightly but not by much but more importantly i got the gearing down to 1T, default is 2 i think.

For transparency i used this ram which i believe is samsung bdie so not the best but more than capable.

Corsair Vengeance Black 32GB 5600MHz DDR5 Memory Kit - 36-36-36-76​


I'm not actually sure if my default kit which was an early adopter kit is actually those speeds but im gonna assume it is for now.

My tuned settings are here:

MC voltage: 1.3v
Dram VDD voltage: 1.435v
Dram VDDQ voltage: 1.435v
Dram VDD switching freq: 1.5v
Dram VDDQ switching freq: 1.5v


Click to expand...

How did you learn how to tune ram? I have no idea and if I start to mess around then I'm sure I'm going to break stuff. What the most straightforward website that teaches you these things? Buildziods videos just drone on and doesn't really tell you anything
 
robgmun said:
How did you learn how to tune ram? I have no idea and if I start to mess around then I'm sure I'm going to break stuff. What the most straightforward website that teaches you these things? Buildziods videos just drone on and doesn't really tell you anything
Click to expand...


Thats exactly how i did it, i've had more no posts and bluescreens than you could imagine lol, but its part of the learning curve. What i find myself researching first is other peoples timings with this particular ram and not just the ram itself but the memory chips that it has. So for instance if you land yourself some Hynix A-die then you've probably got the best chips for overclocking for the biggest potential and usually at the lowest voltages too.

Find what other people have achieved and slowly and pain stakingly work your way towards it. It's no guarantee you'll get the same speed and timings but its an end point you can use to work towards. You may even find yourself being able to go past what other people have got working.

Also make sure you have a suite of benchmarking software installed, memtest, y-cruncher etc are really good at picking out bad memory timings. Sometimes its just a matter of tweaking a voltage to make something stable so if i reach a point where i can post but can't get stable, voltage tweaking is where i usually start before i start to dial things back abit.

Speaking of voltages, there's a lot more to it now than just Dram voltage than feeds from the cpu MC to the dram. There's a whole host of other voltages that people use to make ram stable so its worth researching what each one does and how it helps before tweaking them.
 
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I've quite limited experience in tuning ram, normally I'll just use XMP and be done with it.
But the Gskill 6800 C34 kit I have (Hynix) was extremely easy to tune.
Tightened the timings, C32, 1NT, 7200mhz and its solid with no voltage increase.
 
Here is 8266C34

Ow5gQ5w.png


As a rule of thumb on Z790 boards:

2DPC - 7600-7800
1DPC - 8000+
 
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