How dangerous can OC'ing be to RAM.

[w33dg0d]

I'm considering overclocking my RAM, not necessarily to obtain higher performance as my 4GB of DDR3 is more than efficient for everything I do, but generally out of wonder to how it will increase the current features of my system.
It hardly struggles at the moment with a range of games and software, even during multitasking but my frequency is low and I believe that I could harness a much higher level of effectiveness out of my current setup with a faster and more responsive RAM setting.

As I have never overclocked RAM before I was wondering what are the dangers concerning the situation and whether I would need to invest in extra cooling or any other elements. I can provide exact specifications on my build if this would be vitality to the situation.

 

[geekapproved]

What exactly would be the point?

Overclocking your cpu would be the thing to do if you wanted to get more performance, not your ram.

 

[Rustyy117]

I agree with GeekApproved, Overclocking the CPU does seem to equal more performance, And its generally very easy to get a mild overclock on your CPU, Overclocking RAM however is more tricky, RAM doesn't generally overclock much at all and the performance increase is mostly not noticeable.

Say for example your 4GB of RAM is rated at 1333Mhz 8-8-8-24, You'd struggle to get it past 1400Mhz with the same timings, and you may have to increase your DRAM voltage.
I've seen people get their 1333Mhz RAM to 1600Mhz but have to losen the latency timings which kind of defeats the point in increasing the Mhz speed.

If you plan on increasing the voltage, make sure your case has good airflow, if your pumping an extreme amount of voltage through your RAM then I'd recommend you buy a RAM cooler

Something like this:
http://hothardware.com/News/Kingston-HyperX-Fan-RAM-Cooler-Sneak-Peek/