Quick Voltage Question..

iostream

iostream

iostream

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Hi folks,

I recently bought an i5 2500K and coupled it with a MSI Z68A-GD65 motherboard and 8GB of 1600MHz XMS3.

Fired everything up and the RAM was running at 1333MHz according to the BIOS. I turned on the XMP profile setting, which flipped the ram up to that lovely 1600MHz I paid for.

I then noticed however that the voltage to the RAM was set at 1.65V? Can I drop that to 1.5V? Upsides/downsides to running the ram at either voltage?

Thanks :)
 
This stuff right? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-290-CS

If so it's rated for 1.5-1.65v i thought. Given the XMP profile, i'd say it needs 1.65v to run at the rated speed.
1.65v will not harm them at all, you can however play around with the BIOS and lower the voltage (will have to take out of XMP most probably) and set the memory speed manually.
DDR3 runs very cool, so heat will not be an issue at 1.65v. As for power usage, they use so little it doesn't matter either.
My opinion: If it's stable then leave it.
 
That is indeed the ram, should have linked, sorry.

I'll just leave it at the XMP 1.65V then, thanks for clarifying.

Will this affect overclocking at all? I was hoping to take my CPU up around 4.5GHz.
 
Not really, Overclocking the 2500k is based on the clock speed of the CPU (multiplier) rather than the bus but any system will always benefit from faster RAM.
 
You should be able to reduce the voltage to around 1.5V and why wouldn't you?

Lower voltage is better for the lifespan of your components.

I have 16GB of XMS3 running at 1.5V without issue.
 
I was going to use the following article as a basis for my overclock. Page 2 (see the link) mentions about half way down in the paragraph titled "Memory Voltage" that I should keep my ram voltage within 0.5V of the VCCIO in order to avoid long term damage to the CPU.

I presume that the lower the voltage gap the better? If my XMS3 can theoretically run at 1.5V, is that what I want to aim for when overclocking? If the 1.65V provides stability and no issues, I'll just stick with that..

EDIT: forgot the link..

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/07/how-to-overclock-the-intel-core-i5-2500k/2
 
You've no need to worry about RAM voltage or speed when overclocking the i5-2500K.

Overclocking is achieved by increasing the CPU multiplier which has no effect whatsoever on the RAM.

If you're running at stock speed of 3.3GHz the RAM will be 1600MHz at ~1.5V.

If you overclock to 5GHz the RAM will stay at 1600MHz at ~1.5V.
 
Thanks for all the quick replies. Will have a go at overclocking tonight, and I'll use 1.5V for the ram.

I take it I'll have to disable the XMP setting in order to drop the voltage from 1.65V?
 
iostream said:
Thanks for all the quick replies. Will have a go at overclocking tonight, and I'll use 1.5V for the ram.

I take it I'll have to disable the XMP setting in order to drop the voltage from 1.65V?
Click to expand...

Yep
You will have to set the DRAM speed manually to 1600 and the voltage manual as well, but leave the timings at Auto to begin with, see if they come out as rated, if not, change them manually also.
 
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