Originally posted by XtR-X
So... I need to set my ram to "Standard" other than "turbo" or "agressive", and then I up the Vcore? Afterwards, what am I supposed to change? So then I resume to putting it on turbo/agressive again?
Sorry for lack of knowledge on this subject... but hey... that's why I posted. But what kind of stuff do I mess with in the RAM timings freq mhz, etc. I'm kind of confused. Can you provide general definitions of categories please? Thanks, Veh.
Don't bother adjusting your memory timings. Just leave them to set by SPD and you'll be fine. And you can up the Vcore whenever, that's the voltage for your processor and Vdimm is the voltage for your memory. Don't bother upping the voltage for anything quite yet, wait until you get unstable or can't overclock anymore - then up your voltage in small increments. Adjust the voltage for your processor first, your memory will hit it's limit later. It really depends on your memory, your Corsair might not need voltage adjustment at all when you reach higher speeds, but if you start getting unstability issues, it's not a bad idea to raise the voltage a notch or two.
As for the definitions, here you go:
Vdimm/Vcore - your memory/CPU voltage. I've explained this, only raise it when you can't overclock anymore and/or are getting instability issues. It provides more power to your components to allow them to reach higher speeds, but of course you're pushing more electricity through your components than it's rated for. Just keep voltage modifications to a minimum and you should be perfectly alright. You have good overclocking equipment, and your system board doesn't have high enough voltages to actually risk frying your components, if your voltages are too high, your computer just won't boot and you have to wait for it to load the defaults, that's it. You're safe. If you were using a stock heatsink though, I wouldn't be reccomending voltage modifications. Like I said to Cheezhead, higher voltage is what makes components hotter - not MHz.
Memory frequency - this is the speed that your memory is running at, completely seperate from the FSB. You can set this to run synchronous with the FSB, or asynch. For best performance results, I would reccomend running it synch, because I bet whatever FSB your processor can handle your memory can too(but you probably already knew that).
CAS Timings - These numbers dictate how fast the memory accesses, reads, writes etc., you don't really need to know, but you can imagine how complex memory is. Basically, the lower these numbers are the faster the memory is, but it's not as important as having a higher MHz clock. These timings have NOTHING AT ALL to do with MHz. Just remember that. The Performance/Aggressive modes you had your BIOS at lowered these timings - which made your memory faster, but timings are very sensitive to having high clock speeds. Your memory is probably rated for timings of like 2-3-3-6, but that's only for 400MHz, not anything higher. So, when overclocking, just leave the Performance/Aggressive timings alone and set it to read the timings from your onboard SPD. Your SPD has the compatible timings for different clock speeds written in it, and pretty much everything else about your memory in it.
That's all you need to know for overclocking your memory. Just set your timings to SPD, and set your memory frequency to synchronous with the FSB - or a 1:1 ratio if you have that option. Leave your voltage alone until you can't overclock anymore and/or are getting unstable.
) in your BIOS and can certainly prevent you from overclocking your memory at all. Just me sure they're set to SPD or 3-4-4-8.
