Overclocking - Gskill Sniper ram

Hi guys !

  • So in the end of the month im going to build my first new gamming pc ... and i was wondering:







  • Or can i maintain the same 1600MHz but reduce the cas latency to CL8 or even CL7.




>The motherboard i will buy is the Asus Sabertooth 990FX and as you can see im going with a military theme with my build therefore i really want this particulary ram <


 

 



Reducing the CAS latency to 7 is probably pushing it too far and you will unlikely notice any performance improvements. Increasing the frequency to 1866 MHz shouldn't require any voltage changes, but it depends on the particular kit you get.

The performance difference between 1600 MHz CL 8 and 1866 MHz CL 9 is going to be very small, but test both to see.

the voltage of this kit is 1.25 ... can i push it ? with this motherboard ? 

I would rather go for the 1866 and mantain the CL9. 

OR 1866Mhz and CL8 that would be perfect ...

Overclocking ram can be tricky. I would look around on the net and see if others are OC'ing the particular type of ram you're using. I know I had ZERO success getting any stable OC out of my Corsair Vengeance kit, but I wish you the best. 

If you can drop CAS to 8, then you should be able to hit 1866. Might need more voltage for that speed. 

The problem is, you will never know until you try it.

What I like to do is keep everything at the xmp profile and see how high I can get the frequency before I can't boot anymore. It might not boot up at 1866 at xmp settings. If 1866 is your goal you should try this, then set the timings manually. Might have to bring the voltage up a little too. 

Steps I usually take when messing with my ram. 

I make sure XMP is enabled. If Command rate isn't at 1t already I set it to 1t and try to boot up. It doesn't add much speed so if you have to go back to 2t it isn't a big deal. tCL, tRCD, and tRP are the easiest to change with the biggest noticable difference. Yo can usually drop the tRAS too.

Sometimes when my overclock fails horribly I have to reset CMOS by popping out the battery. If your BIOS has overclocking profiles that you can save to, it makes everything much easier. That way you can load up the last settings you used, and fix whatever you just changed that caused issues. 

The higher the freqency, the more you have to loosen up timings. It is a balancing act from there.

I run through prime95 on the blend test to make sure my RAM is stable. Have become a fan of Y-cruncher, if it passes through 3 sets of y-cruncher I call it good. Then I start my overclocking again lol.

Let us know how you do when all of your parts come in.

^-- What he said.  Just follow this guys instruction and you should be fine.

Oops, almost forgot to add this. Once you start changing timings manually, disable XMP. I usually grab a pen and paper for this part. I write down all of the timings, and slowly change them from there. Being able to boot up does not mean a stable OC.

Not familiar with AMD, but have read in the past that you might have to adjust NB frequencys. Hopefully someone with an AMD build will jump in.

Gskill Sniper ram comes in a few flavors from factory, with a 1866mhz CAS 9,10,9 variant kicking around, although its at a slightly higher voltage of 1.5v, its still no scary amount thats going to cause damage, so as long as you have a well ventilated case (eg not a silent optimized box with less than 2x120mm worth of  fans) you can probably get that speed or even CAS 9,9,9 1866mhz rock stable on your ram kit with those exact settings.