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Should I set my ram to run at 1600?

J

Jman13

Senior member
Just a probably dumb question. My RAM in the rig in my sig is rated for 1600MHz usage, but of course defaults to 1333 on my i5. Is there any reason not to bump it to 1600? Will it even make a difference? I do quite a bit of processor intensive tasks that use a lot of RAM (10-12GB of memory utilized...large image panorama stitching and HDR photography).
 
Ok, so I set it to 1600. Seems to be working fine. Benchmarks are running fine. Windows assessment went from 7.6 to 7.8 on memory performance. One question...I didn't do anything to the voltages, and it appears it's running at 1.5V. I know this RAM is rated for 1.65V at 1600MHz. I've seen some people say to set the voltage to the rated when running at full rated speed. Do I need to do that? Do I risk potential memory errors and stability by running it below rated voltage?
 
Jman13 said:
Ok, so I set it to 1600. Seems to be working fine. Benchmarks are running fine. Windows assessment went from 7.6 to 7.8 on memory performance. One question...I didn't do anything to the voltages, and it appears it's running at 1.5V. I know this RAM is rated for 1.65V at 1600MHz. I've seen some people say to set the voltage to the rated when running at full rated speed. Do I need to do that? Do I risk potential memory errors and stability by running it below rated voltage?
Click to expand...
Are you sure it's running at 1.5V? Check the BIOS to verify. My motherboard started with the recommended voltage automatically.
 
If your BIOS has an XMP setting available when you plug in your memory -I would set it to that unless you are going to overclock. In that case, I would set timings and voltages manually.
 
Burner27 said:
If your BIOS has an XMP setting available when you plug in your memory -I would set it to that unless you are going to overclock. In that case, I would set timings and voltages manually.
Click to expand...

...but I would start at 1.5v and work your way up.
 
I would double check what the voltage actually is.

Then, I would run memtest for a few passes, to make sure it is stable at 1600Mhz. If it passes memtest at 1.5V, you are all set. If not, then bump up the voltage by 0.05V, then try again.

If you are running at 1.65V to being with, run memtest, and if it passes, then lower the voltage by 0.05V and repeat.

Either way, you will know what voltage it takes to be stable, and you will know it's stable, since you stress tested it. Why take the change of having a memory error while doing your photo editing, when a few hours of testing can check stability?
 
I checked in BIOS, and it's running at 1.55V right now. Been through a ton of runs of Prime95, Intel Burn Test (maximum, that uses a ton of RAM), and so on. Seems good to go.
 
My 1600 ram defaulted to 1333, I set it to 1600 but can absolutely not tell the difference anywhere other than a program that tells me it's running at 1600 instead of 1333. 😛
 
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