Is My Ram Holding Me Back?

Hi Guys,

new to Overclockers! Also new to Overclocking! I was wondering if someone could take a look at my system specs and tell me if I should take advantage of triple channel memory; I have 4 4GB sticks (gskills, 1600) dual channel on a G1.Assassin with an i7 960. If so, I'm heading to Microcenter today, what should I buy? I'm try to overclock and I believe it's the memory that is causing instability

Have you tried just running 3x4GB sticks? One thing that helps a lot with that much memory is to increase your QPI/VTT voltage as it requires a decent amount more to handle that much with the IMC on the CPU. The performance difference between double and triple channel isn't that great.

One last question, do you actively use 16GB of memory? (or even 12, or 8?).

I was using 16GBs ( 4 4GBs dual channel); switched it to triple channel 12GB. Seems to have brought temps down a little. Right now i am at 24 x 170= 4079.09MHz, I would like to decrease the multiplier and increase the BLC but I need to up the QPI/VTT voltage. One sight sais to start at +0.2 but in the bios it starts at 1.1 (or something like that) x 0.0 multiplier (which I can't change. What can I do, would you like a snapshot of the bios?

Sure that couldn't hurt, for my X58 system I had my QPI/VTT at ~1.35-1.4v 24/7 and didn't have any issues.

OK, I have blc set at 200 x 12=2399.96 and voltage set at 1.376; should I increase the blc and voltage some more?

If you'd like you can see if your RAM can take more speed (assuming you are running at the 8x divider for the RAM), you can raise your bclk a bit more to see how much it can go past 200. If you are happy at 200, you can start raising the cpu multiplier up to 19/20/21 and so on to see if you can get it stable at 3.8/4.0/4.2ghz.

I'll try it, Thanks!