DDR3 1600 & i7 920?

[pinchthings]

Hi,

I'm building a new rig with a i7 920, Asus P6T regular mobo, and 6GB DDR3 1600 ram.

I know that the base frequency for this chipset is 1333 MHz. I was reading a review of my motherboard and they said that higher memory frequencies are locked unless you have the extreme edition CPU from Intel. Is that true? Since this is my first i7 experience I can't say I fully understand the whole QPI/on board memory controller thing vs. FSB yet.

So my two questions:

1) will my 1600 RAM even run at that speed with a 920 cpu, or will it underclock itself to 1333?

and 2) if it does overclock fine to 1600, is it going to be a heat issue? I'm only using a stock heatsink on my CPU and won't have any special cooling other than a couple case fans.

 

[exar333]

No, the memory multipliers are unlocked for all i7 processors, not just the extreme. The memory will probably default to 1333, but you can adjust the memory speed higher or lower. Heat wont be an issue unless you OC the processor above 3.0-3.2 on the stock cooling.

I am not sure how much you like to adjust BIOS settings, but generally you can get your i7 to run cooler if you dial back the cpu voltage a bit too (check out some threads in the overclocking section).

Enjoy!

 

[Yellowbeard]

You should not have heat issues assuming you have good case airflow. A 920 should easily run 1600 memory at 1600. The only adjustment you might need to make other than the memory voltage is to adjust the QPI bus voltage a little. But, it will probably do 1600 at stock.