Corsair 5600 cl36 to 6000?

[Killerrf]

Good day.

Would there be much to gain from over clocking 5600 to 6000? Or would staying at 5600 with trying to achieve faster latency better?
This is for daily use…no extreme oc and benchmarking goals here. Ha.

This ram is been running on xmp setting for almost 3 months with 12700kf and asus prime-a mb.
I have fiddled with cpu and Gpu over clocking and under volting on this system and past systems but never ever fiddled with ram other than just turn on xmp and roll. Thanks.

Edit: cpu Id shows Samsung memory at 1.25v. Running games and such i looked at mem temp on armory crate and it runs around 42-43c.

 

[EarthDog]

Hey there! Post up some pics of CPUz... the memory and SPD tabs showing the details of whatcha got.

 

[Woomack]

What motherboard do you have? It's usually a limiting factor for DDR5 OC.

Samsung will run like:
6000 34-34-34, maybe 34-35-35 at 1.35-1.45V, but the safe setting is 36-36-36
6200 36-36-36, maybe 34-35-35 at 1.40-1.50V, but again the safe setting seems 36-36-36
6400-6600 38-38-38, maybe 36-36-36 1.35-1.45V
Above 6600 you need good chips and good motherboard +some luck with both.

I assume you have something close to the safe/recommended settings in the XMP at 5600 and it should run at 6000 but maybe at 1.35-1.40V.

In short, higher frequency also lowers latency, even if you relax timings (of course not too much). So no matter what, DDR5 OC is like you push for the highest frequency and later check how tight can timings go. Usually, it won't run at more than 6600-6666.

 

[Killerrf]

Hey there! Post up some pics of CPUz... the memory and SPD tabs showing the details of whatcha got.

Yes I will post some pics later on this evening.

Post magically merged: Apr 15, 2022

What motherboard do you have? It's usually a limiting factor for DDR5 OC.

Samsung will run like:
6000 34-34-34, maybe 34-35-35 at 1.35-1.45V, but the safe setting is 36-36-36
6200 36-36-36, maybe 34-35-35 at 1.40-1.50V, but again the safe setting seems 36-36-36
6400-6600 38-38-38, maybe 36-36-36 1.35-1.45V
Above 6600 you need good chips and good motherboard +some luck with both.

I assume you have something close to the safe/recommended settings in the XMP at 5600 and it should run at 6000 but maybe at 1.35-1.40V.

In short, higher frequency also lowers latency, even if you relax timings (of course not too much). So no matter what, DDR5 OC is like you push for the highest frequency and later check how tight can timings go. Usually, it won't run at more than 6600-6666.

Motherboard is asus prime-A.

 

[Woomack]

On the QVL are kits up to 6000 and something like 36-36-36 1.30V on Samsung IC, but I would still check settings from my last post. Sub-timings and other voltages can stay at auto. As long as the BIOS is up to date then it should handle voltages and other settings. Once you stabilize the 6000 or higher clock, then can play with sub-timings. Mainly focus on tREFI (higher is better, 100k+ is optimal but too high may affect the stability) and tRFC (lower is better, typically around 400-480 will be fine).

 

[Janus67]

In all honesty, I highly doubt you'd notice the difference outside of synthetic benchmarks. But you're welcome to give it a shot, we have some very talented memory gurus here

 

[Killerrf]

here are them cpuz pics you wanted to check out.

edit: thru in what hwinfo shows for memory

 

[Killerrf]

fiddled with ram for abit first pic was an aida64 benchmark with xmp 5600 settings. then last pic is what i have now with voltage upped to 1.300v. looking thru these ram settings is greek to me haha. i tried all autopilot 6200mhz in bios and it wouldnt post at all. so reverted back to 6000. also it wont post when in bios switching from 2N to 1N setting. have to leave at 2N. according to this quick benchmark should be a little faster anyway.

Edit: scratch that haha. It crashed into a game like 30 secs. I see there is a few bios updates. I’ll try new bios and see how far auto speed gets me tomorrow but thinking my set of ram sticks aren’t going to get much more than xmp. Maybe be lower end chips. Who knows.

 

[Woomack]

I guess it needs new BIOS or a bit higher voltages. Check 1.35V VDD/VDDQ (these two voltages usually have the same values). If the motherboard sets it any lower then can check the SA voltage at 1.25V, but as long as there is new BIOS then it should set it automatically.
Command Rate 1N does not always work. It also doesn't affect the performance on DDR5 (at least it's barely visible even in synthetic tests).
Everything else seems fine. About the same XMP, but at higher voltages have DDR5-6000 kits.

 

[Killerrf]

hello. so i put the latest bios in for my mobo and still a no go. first i set all auto 6000mhz speed and it loaded into windows and hwinfo showed 1.26v. so i went back into bios and only things i changed were the timings to 36-36-36-76(left 76 value from stock) upped the voltages to 1.35 voltage under dram voltages. i changed those voltages vdd/vddq under each ram stick in bios then left rest auto. hwinfo confirmed 1.35v to ram sticks. i downloaded a memtest64 from techpower up and it only ran couple min and showed one error. not sure if thats good test or not for ram. never tried 1.4 volts. restarted computer and enabled xmp again and loaded win and restarted that mem64 test and left it run for a while and didnt get no errors. not sure maybe i have crappy ram and 5600 cl36 is all its good for.

 

[Killerrf]

i tried again. upped vdd and vddq both to 1.355 volts at 6000 mhz. 36-36-36-72. in hwinfo the trfc you say should be down around 450 or so? it looks like its really high. been running the game that crashed a min into it yesterday for 30 min now and seems to be working fine and that mem64 test i let run for a while and there was no errors. so a little progress i suppose.

 

[Woomack]

It should be fine like that. TRFC can be lower, but it won't change much. I get like a 1FPS difference in tests based on games between 6000 and 6600 when there are already 100+ FPS.

 

[Killerrf]

It should be fine like that. TRFC can be lower, but it won't change much. I get like a 1FPS difference in tests based on games between 6000 and 6600 when there are already 100+ FPS.

Hello. So I changed that value down to 480 after I posted last night and it went into windows fine but didn’t test anything getting late. I’ll try the mem test in the bios and see if it finds errors at this current setup. I had tried mem test in bios before but it showed the standard 4800 mhz speed and thought it wasn’t working right but another post on here you say that’s normal to show that. So I can assume it will be testing speeds as they are set in bios at the time. I wish I could see ram temps in that version. Maybe I should get mem test pro and test in windows so I can see temps. But then again my little bump in speed/voltage likely not going to overheat ram.
If all goes good then maybe I’ll try to lower first number down to 34 and try again. See what happens.

 

[Killerrf]

Woohoo! Think my first ram o/c is a success. Ha. Let memtest86 run thru bios for a hair over an hour and it passed. Highest temp was 52c avg was 49. The last bios update must have updated mem test86 cause I know ram temp wasn’t reading before. That was a relief to be able to see temps. Before test I lowered that tRFC From 880 to 480. I looked thru bios settings for tREFI but didn’t see that but getting late tonight and may have missed it in list. Not a big oc from 5600 cl36 to 6000 cl36 but It’s a start. I’ll run this setup for a while and maybe be able to achieve a little faster later on. Just have to shove the voltage to it I guess is the bottom line. Thanks again for the advice.

 

[Killerrf]

It should be fine like that. TRFC can be lower, but it won't change much. I get like a 1FPS difference in tests based on games between 6000 and 6600 when there are already 100+ FPS.

I found that tRFEI setting and auto was set to 6250. I initially set it to 40000 and wow Aida64 quick mem bench showed like 3 gb/s across the board. I had intially set at 6200 mhz at 1.40 volts and mem test would get lots of errors. The timings were 36/36/36/76

So I dropped it back down to 6000 mhz again. Dropped volts to 1.36 volts and left tREFI AT 40000 but would get one error.

I’m trying right now again at 20000 trefi. But is there any other voltage with cpu that would need upping for stability?

Edit: it passed bios memtest86 now with trefi at 20000. That still gives 2gb/s across board lift. Give that a go. Seems like it would run at higher speeds like 6200mhz but cpu mem controller weaker possibly or weaker ram sticks? Guess could try slower timings at higher frequency.

 

[Woomack]

It's more on the motherboard's side than the memory controller or RAM. Typically, you can set at least ~100k tREFI but sometimes it doesn't work.
All CPUs that I tested could run at 7200, but most motherboards couldn't run stable at more than 6400, or there were other issues like one slot could make 7200 but the other one only 6400 (that's on 2-slot motherboards).

2-slot motherboards usually OC memory higher. Typical for 2-slot with good BIOS is 6600-7000. Typical for 4-slot with good BIOS is 6200-6600. There is a question if these "top OC" motherboards have any point in this generation because of mentioned memory slots issues and not so much higher memory clock in general. For example you can pay twice as much for the motherboard but you get 2 memory ratios/steps more. It's like from 6200-6400 to 6600-6800. In games and other things it gives 0-1% performance gain. It looks much better only in synthetic tests or pure bandwidth/latency tests.

There are no other voltages worth to use at 6000-6200. You can try SA at 1.25V and memory controller voltage at 1.30V. I don't think it would need higher but I also think it runs like that at auto.

 

[Killerrf]

It's more on the motherboard's side than the memory controller or RAM. Typically, you can set at least ~100k tREFI but sometimes it doesn't work.
All CPUs that I tested could run at 7200, but most motherboards couldn't run stable at more than 6400, or there were other issues like one slot could make 7200 but the other one only 6400 (that's on 2-slot motherboards).

2-slot motherboards usually OC memory higher. Typical for 2-slot with good BIOS is 6600-7000. Typical for 4-slot with good BIOS is 6200-6600. There is a question if these "top OC" motherboards have any point in this generation because of mentioned memory slots issues and not so much higher memory clock in general. For example you can pay twice as much for the motherboard but you get 2 memory ratios/steps more. It's like from 6200-6400 to 6600-6800. In games and other things it gives 0-1% performance gain. It looks much better only in synthetic tests or pure bandwidth/latency tests.

There are no other voltages worth to use at 6000-6200. You can try SA at 1.25V and memory controller voltage at 1.30V. I don't think it would need higher but I also think it runs like that at auto.

Hello. Thanks for the reply. I found something interesting.
I did notice when I manually set frequency in bios my memory controller voltage was 1.15 (which shows standard setting) around there.
When I enabled xmp 5600 cl36 again I looked thru voltages and now see 1.202v for mem control volts.

System agent voltage on xmp drops down to 1.18 around there and when I manually did 6000 the SA voltage was hair over 1.2 volts. So it seems bios is adjusting SA voltage auto for that. But mem controller voltage it is not doing it auto. I’ll have to try adjusting mem controller volts to 1.2 like xmp is doing and then see if higher mem speeds are solid.

 

[Woomack]

Usually the best works when you enable XMP and adjust manually everything you want, like voltages. I guess you have XMP1 and XMP2 options in your BIOS, even though your RAM has only one XMP profile. If you have 2 XMP options then the first is usually for the optimal performance (optimized by BIOS) and the second one is for optimal compatibility, close to the XMP profile in RAM. It's described in BIOS when you click on the XMP/auto/manual options. The first one should give a bit better performance but the second one can be better for higher frequency OC. I'm not sure how it looks on your motherboard so you have to try it on your own.

1.35V SA and 1.3V memory controller are usually enough for 6600-6800. I don't know if it's going to help on your motherboard, but you can check higher voltages.

 

[Killerrf]

Usually the best works when you enable XMP and adjust manually everything you want, like voltages. I guess you have XMP1 and XMP2 options in your BIOS, even though your RAM has only one XMP profile. If you have 2 XMP options then the first is usually for the optimal performance (optimized by BIOS) and the second one is for optimal compatibility, close to the XMP profile in RAM. It's described in BIOS when you click on the XMP/auto/manual options. The first one should give a bit better performance but the second one can be better for higher frequency OC. I'm not sure how it looks on your motherboard so you have to try it on your own.

1.35V SA and 1.3V memory controller are usually enough for 6600-6800. I don't know if it's going to help on your motherboard, but you can check higher voltages.

so i tried 6000 36/36/36/76 with ram at 1.31v, SA 1.23v(auto) MC 1.23v(manuallyset) trfc at 480 and trefi at 60,000. it passed the bios memtest and ran game for an hour without any hiccups. now knowing about the MC voltage auto not seeming to work likely be able to run higher frequencies but likely for day to day use and gaming not notice a bunch. in my case 51C max memtest and 43-44C gaming. seems solid. Thx

 

[Killerrf]

so i tried 6000 36/36/36/76 with ram at 1.31v, SA 1.23v(auto) MC 1.23v(manuallyset) trfc at 480 and trefi at 60,000. it passed the bios memtest and ran game for an hour without any hiccups. now knowing about the MC voltage auto not seeming to work likely be able to run higher frequencies but likely for day to day use and gaming not notice a bunch. in my case 51C max memtest and 43-44C gaming. seems solid. Thx

edit: so used this setup for many hrs last evening and solid. here are couple quick benchs pics from stock 4800 to 5600 to 6000 mhz. kinda neat see the bumps in speeds. learned a little about ram o/c here. thanks again for the help.