Best Ram for i7-4790K?

[Achilleslastand]

Why does the Intel product sheet recommend 1333/1600 and not anything higher?
http://ark.intel.com/products/80807/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_40-GHz
Would it hurt anything to use 2133/2400 or do you need to stick with what they recommend?

 

[bigboxes]

You can use whatever your mobo will support. However, anything beyond 1600 provides little in real world usage. If you want to get the highest benchmarks then buy the fastest memory you can afford. I went with the tightest timings. I can always oc the ram if I want to play with the benchies.

 

[lehtv]

Why does the Intel product sheet recommend 1333/1600 and not anything higher?

Because higher than 1600MHz is considered 'overclocked', and requires a Z-series chipset board with support for overclocked RAM.

Would it hurt anything to use 2133/2400 or do you need to stick with what they recommend?

As long as your board supports 2133 or 2400 MHz RAM, that's fine. I would probably shoot for max. 1.6V rated RAM - or even 1.5V in the case of 2133. That is, assuming the price premium over 1866 or 1600 isn't huge.

 

[Dasa2]

if your overclocking the cpu then 2400c10 2x8g 1.65v $95 would be the point where high performance ram is still good value

after that it jumps up in price rather quick
2666c12 $140
2800c10 $340

1600-2400 ram can provide a fairly decent performance gain to the cpu ~5-15% in programs that overflow the cpu cache like compressing files or games assuming the game isn't gpu bottlenecked like most

if you dont have improved cooling and are not really interested in overclocking then as above its best to stick to 1.5v ram

 

[guskline]

Dasa2 I have the Gskill DDR3-2400 2x8g ram in rig 2 below with an Asus Maximus Hero mb and it rocks at 2400 for my 4790k (which also rocks at 4.7 Mhz and 1.3v )