some ram advice for an overclock build

[colincliff]

I'm planning a matx build in the Silverstone TJ08 case with an E7200 and a Asus P5K-VM iG33 motherboard.

I am hoping to overclock the E7200 up to about 3.5ghz which seems quite easy, with the 1:1 fsb ram ratio.

I was wondering what ram people would recommend. I'm a bit confused as to how quick the ram would need to be. Would some good PC6400 ram be fine, or would i need PC8500. I would rather not overclock the ram too much if possible.


thanks in advance to all those cever people out there!

[Salazaar]

You should have no problem on PC6400. The E7200 has a 9.5 multiplier and the PC6400 will be okay up to 400Mhz bus speed on a 1:1 ratio, in theory you could get 3.8Ghz on those setting!

(I'm not guaranteeing in any way that your chip could actually reach 3.8Ghz, but the memory could handle the settings)

[Flewis]

The e7200 has a 9.5x multiplier so PC6400 speed ram could give you a 400MHz FSB which results in a clock speed of 3.8GHz. If this is enough for you then stick with PC6400 as there is a bit of a price increase to higher speeds. Chances are any ram you buy would go past the rated speed anyway.

[colincliff]

great, thanks for the quick answers.

Is there any particular ram you would recommend if you were buying at the moment? I was hoping to buy from Scan but they only seem to stock one make of memory

2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-18 - something like this be good value, or are the better / cheaper options?

[Blitzen]

Although OCUK is not popular, their RAM is exceptional value. Couple that with the fact that if you receive DOA RAM or you need to RMA at any point (lifetime warranties), i would recommend getting you RAM from there.

[Salazaar]

Although OCUK is not popular, their RAM is exceptional value. Couple that with the fact that if you receive DOA RAM or you need to RMA at any point (lifetime warranties), i would recommend getting you RAM from there.

I'd second that, OCUK do great deals on memory, particularly the OCZ platinum series.

[ikix]

What are the Q6600 multipliers?

[Salazaar]

x9 AFAIK

[colincliff]

ok,

I'm looking at a choice between

OCZ (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series CAS 4-4-4-15 - from OCUK

Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400C4 CAS 4-4-4-12 - from Scan

the corsair would work out a few ponds cheaper as i wouldnt have to pay shipping,

are the OCZ sticks much better?

[staffsMike]

Running 1:1 it won't matter I don't think as the RAM will be below stock speed anyway. So get the corsair

If you think you will need to overclock the RAM though the OCZ or Geil sticks on overclockers are a better pick.

[colincliff]

great, thanks guys. i think the corsair will be perfect. Seem to be capable in this test X-bit labs - Choosing the Right Memory for Core 2 Duo Platform - Part 3: DDR2-800 SDRAM Modules Roundup (page 8)

[staffsMike]

XMS2 started out with different RAM chips I think, good overclockers perhaps less reliable though I don't remember.

Now it's very reliable and doesn't overclock that well lol I've had a set though, it's good stuff

[ikix]

What exactly is the point of 1:1 ratio, surely (even though its not dramatically important) a faster RAM speed will be benefiting if you have the room to clock it up, even to atleast its stock frequency.

[Noxvayl]

What exactly is the point of 1:1 ratio, surely (even though its not dramatically important) a faster RAM speed will be benefiting if you have the room to clock it up, even to atleast its stock frequency.

When you have low multipliers like 7 for instance to get your CPU to 3360Mhz(which most Core2Duo CPU's can get to easily) you need 480Mhz core clock to achieve that(480x7=3360) so if you had memory at FSB 1:1, which basically means your ram multiplies the clock by 2, the ram's speed would then be 960Mhz which with PC6400 RAM's case would be a considerable overclock without even reaching the limits of your CPU.

Basically the point is so that you can achieve the best overclock. Sometimes but not always your RAM isn't the limiting factor but in order to determine that you need to set it as low as possible.

The figures above are the figures from my rig which uses that same set of Corsair memory you have ordered so they may not be amazing overclockers but they are good enough