DRAM Speed Setting Question

I built a PC with an i7-930, ASUS P6X58D-E Mobo and Kingston DDR3 RAM. The computer has been working flawlessly but I did notice that the DRAM frequency is 1066 instead of 1600 for my Kingston RAM (KHX1600C8D3K3/6GX).

I'm not really looking to OC the PC, but was wondering if I should manually select 1600 DRAM frequency in the BIOS in the "AI Tweaker Menu". Also, if I do should I let the voltage be selected automatically or does it need to be manually set?

Also, what's considered to be a "very high DRAM frequency" that would cause the system to be unstable?

Is there anything else I need to do or watch out for?

I haven't messed with many i7's yet, but it should be possible to do (though i series is more sensitive to clock/voltage changes from what I've read). The short answer is, does your motherboard support that speed? Sometimes boards will default to a lower voltage and the memory is clocked as such. For some reason my memory refused to go to 1066 until I looked at my memory's spec's and the motherboard was under set at a lower voltage so I upped it to the recommended setting and manually raised the RAM speed to 1066 and it worked fine. If the voltage is 1.65v (I believe) and the memory is clocked lower I would try to just raise it manually to the correct speed. I would not raise it past that mark. If it fails, just reset the BIOS and let it sit where the the auto settings place it. Some memory just needs to be nudged. Sometimes PSU's don't provide enough power or there's voltage droop which the motherboard tries to play it safe and lowers the voltage. Maybe someone that has more experience with i7's will chime in.

I went to the AI Tweaker panel in the Bios and after selecting DRAM Frequency it gave me a dropdown of speeds that included 1600. After I selected 1600 it asked me if I wanted to keep my current voltage or select Auto, so not knowing if the current voltage is OK I selected Auto.

After restarting the computer everything seems to work. No glitches of BSOD. Windows Experience increase my memory score from 7.5 to 7.8.

With light use my system temp is 31C and CPU temp is 37C.

OK ... Even though everything worked fine I think I did this wrong.

The Kingston memory supports eXtreme Memory Profile (XMP), so I set the DRAM frequency setting back to Auto (default) and instead changed what's called the "Ai Overclock Tuner" from Auto (default) to XMP. The Mobo manual says:

"If you install memory modules supporting the eXtreme Memory Profile (X.M.P.) Technology, choose this item to set the profiles supported by your memory modules for optimizing system performance."

It looks like "Auto" ignores the fact that the modules support XMP so the frequency is set to 1066, which is the specification for the i7-930. Am I correct in saying that the CPU is now being overclocked with regards to supporting 1600 memory frequency, but the memory itself is not overclocked?

1600 is the maximum frequency it can run it, not the frequency it should run it, and is set based on the bus speed etc. Before you try changing it I suggest you do fairly extensive reading on overclocking.

tim wrote in post #11022106
1600 is the maximum frequency it can run it, not the frequency it should run it, and is set based on the bus speed etc. Before you try changing it I suggest you do fairly extensive reading on overclocking.

I've been doing quite a bit of reading over the last few days, but I understand what you're getting at. Tweaking the settings wrong could lead to an unstable system or something getting cooked.

Some of the overclocking forum guys don't even seem to think of doing this as overclocking ... although in my mind it is since the i7 is spec'd at 1066. One site basically said XMP is DRAM overclocking for noobs Temperatures are really low and the system stability seems perfect, at least no different that before I made the change.

Also, with the i7, Intel supports memory overclocking:

http://www.intel.com …r/game/extreme-memory.htm