RAM-Haswell-Did I do a good thing?

spankmon · Jul 8, 2014

My mITX build has GSkill 1600 RAM 4gb (2x2gb). At the stock settings Memory only rates a 5.9 on the Windows Experience Index (I'm aware of most people's opinion of WEI) and the low rating has troubled me. So I went into BIOS and upped the RAM multiplier to 1800 and the WEI score for memory jumped to 7.8. Did I do a good thing or a foolish thing? System specs are in my signature. The system has performed nicely since it was first assembled. Still running nicely with the raised RAM multiplier.

Alpha3031 · Jul 8, 2014

It's fine

many people OC RAM.

Tradesman1 · Jul 8, 2014

No problem, and the extra bandwidth from the higher freq will improve performance

spankmon · Jul 8, 2014

That's good news. Many thanks for the reassurance.

Tradesman1 · Jul 8, 2014

Have fun!

spankmon · Jul 8, 2014

The timings went from 9-9-9-24 to 9-10-10-24. I suppose that is normal behavior?

Tradesman1 · Jul 8, 2014

That's very good, sticking at CL9

junkeymonkey · Jul 8, 2014

my 1600 c10 gskills show a 7.8 at box stock no oc

spankmon · Jul 8, 2014

I was really expecting a high score when it was first built... initially had a Pentium with the 1600 controller but never tried raising the mem multiplier. So I thought the i5 cpu would probably straighten out the mem score... no change until I upped the RAM to 1800. Live and learn.

junkeymonkey · Jul 9, 2014

that's all I got is the i5 4670 I would also think that score is kinda low [???] if it came out like that for me I guess I would be scratching my head on it my ripjaws are just set to there xmp

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231489

spankmon · Jul 9, 2014

I thought the XMP profile would improve the WEI score but it didn't. BIOS and cpu-z both showed the RAM running at the correct speeds so I presumed the low score was the result of having only 4gb ram. Nice to find out it was just begging for an overclock.

Alpha3031 · Jul 9, 2014

1800? That's weird, usually it's 1866.

spankmon · Jul 9, 2014

1800? That's weird, usually it's 1866.

I didn't enter 1800 manually, it was one of the options from the drop-down menu in BIOS for "Enhanced Performance". The options were 16, 18, 21, 24 without decimals. Maybe I can enter 1866 manually... I'll have another look at BIOS.

EDIT: This is odd; Now there are options with decimals... I swear they weren't there before. I'll try 18.66 and see what happens.
EDIT-2: Oh wow, this is fabulous. Bumped it up to 1866 and now the WEI is 7.9 all across the test except the cpu at 7.6 ... I know the WEI has little credence, but this certainly makes my day. The timings again changed to 9-11-11-24.
EDIT-3: I'll run Prime95 for a while and see if it melts into a puddle.

spankmon · Jul 9, 2014

Many thanks to all three of you for the quick, straight-to-the-point replies.

RAM is running perfectly at 1866. Prime95 mostly hovers between 70 and 80 degrees C with two of the cores occasionally reaching 91 for a brief moment or two. Planning to put a different fan on the cpu cooler with higher air flow, and maybe use arctic silver 5 paste... that should keep temps below 90 for an entire day of Prime95 (I hope). Thanks again to the TomsHardware tigers.

Alpha3031 · Jul 9, 2014

BTW, if you OC your RAM, you're supposed to use a memory stress test like Mem86+.

spankmon · Jul 10, 2014

O.K. I ran memtest86 standard test thru 15 passes in 6.5 hours with no errors. Everything seems to be peachy keen.

Tradesman1 · Jul 10, 2014

Sounds good!

RAM-Haswell-Did I do a good thing?

Distinguished

Honorable

Legenda in Aeternum

Distinguished

Legenda in Aeternum

Distinguished

Legenda in Aeternum

Polypheme

Distinguished

Polypheme

Distinguished

Honorable

Distinguished

Distinguished

Honorable

Distinguished

Legenda in Aeternum

Share this page