Hello, I'm about to buy the ASUS Z170 motherboard and I'm wondering if I should aim for the 3400Mhz OC memory (max for the mobo) ? What would be a sweet spot in terms of price and performance? I know the differences are miniscule but I'd rather make the best purchase possible, considering the RAM price seems to have gone up (in Poland anyway) and I'm on a more or less limited budget.
The price of a 3000Mhz g.skill ripjaws 2x8gb is about 150$ in Poland.
Just my opinion, but i have never had any luck overclocking ram. Even getting "fast" ram to run at its advertised speed has been difficult. Sometimes, the more DIMMS you have installed, the lower the speed you have to run.
It is not just as simple as dropping it in and it works!
Other's mileage may vary, but I don't believe it is worth it to get the fastest possible ram for a board.
My current mobo for DDR3 uses up to 2133Mhz OC and I've been using such RAM. Only thing i had to do i select the proper profile in BIOS. Now whether those actually work as they're supposed I honestly didn't look that deep into it. BIOS shows 2133Mhz tho.
Just buy a kit that is decent; the super high frequency kits really aren't worth it imo. Better to get more ram than fast ram.
Yeah, it is possible i suck at over clocking.
RAM can always work slower, so there will be no drama if you get the RAM and it doesn't work well at top speed.
Someone must have tried it, can you find any videos of it on youtube?
I'll do that, thanks.
Right I completely forgot they can in fact run at lower speeds the 2133's I got run at 1600Mhz by default. Completely forgot about that ;p
I think that a kit with 2666 or 2800 speeds and the tightest timings possible is a good choice that won't give you that many issues because of the high speed while not being a "slow" RAM kit. The higher the RAM speed the more issues you might have runnig at those speeds, even if it's in the XMP profile. This happens because the capability of running high speed RAM is not only enabled by the motherboard but also by the memory controller integrated into the CPU.
With RAM it's the capacity not the speed that matters... if you are doing something that requires really fast ram; integrated graphics, ram disk, etc. Then get the faster speed IF you already maxed out the capacity. In almost all real world applications, you will not notice a difference between RAM speeds.
Look in the motherboard manual, buy one of the ram kits specified there.
I think those lists doesn't get updated.
in that case I'd suggest to check motherboard compatibility from ram vendors.
I second this