Getting HX318C10F/8 to Run at Rated 1866?

[Golodkin]

I've been putting together a box out of all the leftover stuff I had from bundle sales a while back.

Fry's had an MSI 970 Gaming MB on sale for $29.00, shipped a few weeks back and I couldn't resist that price

I've put together a box with a temporary test Phenom II X3 CPU and a stick of the above HyperX memory, stats here.

Good news is the build seems to work perfectly and the MSI BIOS unlocks the extra CPU core, turning it into an X4. Everything is rock solid at full F@H load for 24hrs.

The only bad news is that this HyperX RAM isn't running at anywhere near its rated speed. I was told would be a problem when I got it packaged with the MB in the system I built earlier this summer, so not wanting any headaches I got some G.Skill Sniper RAM for that project instead and it worked fine at rated speed.

There was a substantial argument about whether getting the rated speed out of this HyperX RAM was even possible with an AMD FX-series CPU, but I shouldn't have thought it would have been a problem with an old Phenom II.

So, two questions:

If this 1866mHz-rated RAM can indeed run at 1866mHz, how should I go about getting there (or even higher?), step by step?

Will the resulting RAM settings have to be changed yet again when I come up with a faster CPU for this box?

Many thanks for any sound advice!

 

[Woomack]

Phenoms have too weak memory controllers to run at 1866+. They're designed for DDR3-1066/1333 and usually you can't set much more than 1600. FX has controller designed to run at 1866 so it should work without issues.
On Phenom I would set 1600 and try to set tighter timings than at 1866 so something like 9-9-9 or 9-10-9 ( as in RAM specification ).

 

[Golodkin]

Phenoms have too weak memory controllers to run at 1866+. They're designed for DDR3-1066/1333 and usually you can't set much more than 1600. FX has controller designed to run at 1866 so it should work without issues.
On Phenom I would set 1600 and try to set tighter timings than at 1866 so something like 9-9-9 or 9-10-9 ( as in RAM specification ).

OK, that's fine, as I expect to get some kind of FX-* CPU for this box next time I see an extra-long deal on one, and put the Phenom II back in its original system. I'm just testing and messing around with this box at the moment, experimenting and trying to learn things (preferably without generating a lot of expensive smoke).

I think 1333 was what the original speed was at power-up, though when I experimented with that "OC Genie" thing they had, the RAM speed dropped to 1066.

Still, I was told that this memory would not do its rated speed with an FX-* CPU without a bunch of monkeying around.