Pls help choose RAM to OC i7 920

Or should i just leave well enough alone and stick with what I have? I play games and surf the internet mainly. I have noticed that with mulitple programs open as well as running Crysis2 maxed out my RAM usage has not exceeded 3.8GB. Any further OC'ing will be mainly for bencmarking. I am so confused right now!

**edit**

I have decided to leave well enough alone. After spending much of the day researching the topic, the most common answer is yes it should work at the slowest timing but for overclocking it adds one more varialble to the equation that will make things unstable.

Thanks
Al

Yes and no. Sorry, it looks like you've decided but I wanted to throw my 2₵ in. I wouldn't recommend getting a different memory set. It will probably work as you mentioned but you will have to do numerous and mind numbing timing and voltage changes - I'm pretty sure you won't be able to just change the timings and voltages to the lesser and equal settings and bingo. they work. Mixing memory pairs is NEVER a good idea. Your best bet is to get the matching set and go from there. Most of the time even if you get memory with matching timings and voltages just the different manufacturer will make it difficult if not impossible to get it to work at rated speeds let alone overclocked.

Finally, if you have the matching sets then the overclocking of the cpu is not impossible, and as always with overclocking, just the right tweaking it can be as stable as what you have now. If you "I can pick up another triple channel 6GB kit of PC3 16000 for 60-70 dollars", and just get 2 kits for only $120/140 that will work as well at a 12 GB kit. I have purchased and used several 6 GB kits and doubled them and didn't have any problems with the 12 GB. I run an EE 965 at 4.2 GHz and use 12 GB's of Dominator 1600 memory at 1800MHz. I can even run it at 4.6 and it runs all day long except for intense game playing and stress testing, then I only get about 4 minutes out of it, (lol so far). The point is, it will work and run stable. And you seem to like to overclock for the fun of it since all you do with it is "play game and surf the internet". Looks like the third thing you do with it is overclock.

Anyway, overclockers stick together and push each other to keep pushing and you sound like an overclocker to me so quit   and make that thing sing  
MY 2 ₵

As it turns out, Newegg had a sale on 12GB Patriot Viper Extreme DDR3 2000MHz with free shipping so I bought a set. Unfortunately, it only seems to run at 1900MHz or less. After some research, I have read a lot of cases where the XMP profile changed the qpi/vtt to as high as 1.6V. At default qpi/vtt of 1.175V and 143 x 14 and a DRAM voltage of 1.66V with timings 9/11/9/27 my system immediately downclocks the RAM and gives me an error stating that overclocking has cause my system to become unstable. I have increased the QPI to 1.4V and got as far as the windows load screen before crashing. I submitted a ticket with Patriot on Friday so I want to see what they say before I start playing with any other RAM settings. Anyway, what I am really interested in is how you got your i7 965ee to 4.7GHz. In my search for a new RAM kit, I came across a guy who had just purchased a new motherboard and socket 2011 6 core processor and he ended up selling me his i7 965ee for $200. I have managed to hit 4.26GHz with these settings:

32 x 133
Vcore 1.55V
EIST off
Turbo off

With everthing else on auto, and running prime95 my core temp hit the low 80's. That seems to be the limit of Vcore and temp before I get into the red. I have seen some screen shots of guys who pushed their i7 965 to over 5GHz but they had Vcores in excess of the absolute max 1.55V. I am not sure if I am ready to go that high. I noticed you have a multiplier of 23 with a bclk of 204 to hit 4.7GHz. What voltage settings did you use to acheive that? Also, have you noticed if a higher bclk requires a higher cpu vcore? @ 3.86GHz with a bclk of 133 my cpu vcore according to cpuid is 1.376V. @3.84GHz with bclk of 160MHz and qpi/vtt set to 1.25V my cpu vcore is 1.42V according to cpuid. I thought that the voltage required would have been based on how fast the cpu is running and nothing to do with the bclk.

Actually, I used 23 multiplyer X 204 BCLK. My motherboard is the gigabyte X58A-OC, designed especially for overclockers. It allows me to adjust my BCLK in 0.3 increments while it's running with the push of a button - 1 push 204.3 - 2 pushes 204.6 - 3 pushes crashed   . So I did it again and cpu-z verified. Which actually came to 204.6 BCLK. If you check my cpu-z verification you'll notice that my v-core was 1.68v. I could only pull it off by water cooling and sticking my radiator unit, the ERM-2K3U, - fan sucking in - out the window when it was about 36*F out side pulling the cool air across the radiator. lol. The be-otch of it is before I could save the bios settings it crashed and I lost all the settings. Had to do the clear cmos button   . I had to bump up quite a few other voltage settings across the board and I sure can't remember them. I will try again when it starts freezing around here but I live in South Carolina and it's still 70*F outside.

Try this - cpu-24, intel turbo boost enabled, cores all, disable cpu enhanced halt state,c3/c6/c7 cpu thermal monitor cpu/eist function bi directional prochot ///qpi clock ratio auto uncore clock ratio auto base clock control enabled bclk frequency 168 pci express frequency 100 cpu clock drive 800mV pci express clock drive 900mV performance enhance memory "extreme" extreme memory profile (xmp) 8.0 memory frequency 1344 dram timing selectable (spd) quick ddr voltage 1.65 all memory timings on auto cpu v core 1.45v qpi/vtt voltage 1.455 ioh core 1.2 dram voltage 1.68 cpu/pll 1.9 pcie 1.66 qpi/pll 1.18 ich i/o auto ich core auto. With the turbo on it should give you 4.2GHz at the lower voltage settings. Depending on what motherboard bios you have some things will be in different places and some things will be called different things. But these are the settings I had on my asus p6t6 motherboard and only had to make slight changes when I went to the X58A-UD3R board and a few more when I went to this one.

To get your ram to run at the 2000 have you tried underclocking the cpu? There's another voltage setting that helps push the voltage across the memory controller in the cpu but I'm not sure which one of the settings it is. I'm still new to the overclocking game so I just go up and down on voltages on different things and see if it helps or hurts. It might be the "XMP profile changed the qpi/vtt to as high as 1.6V" but I normally keep mine below or at the v-core setting but I don't know. I have my 1600 running at 1800 and my cpu at 4.2GHz, while my v-core is at 1.47 and my QPI/VTT is only at 1.335. If I underclock my memory to say, 1344, I can come down on my v-core to 1.45 and pass the multi-hour OCCT stress test so there is a correlation there somewhere. Back to yours - While it's running at 1900 if you bump up the dram voltage to 1.7 or a little more and bump up your BCLK your ram MHz should increase with it. Make sure your uncore clock ratio doubles whatever speed your ram is set to. If that BSOD's on you check the code and see what that is. If it's 0x50 that is usually ram timings/frequency add more ddr3 voltage. You can go up on the ram voltage but, like the cpu, make sure you watch the ram modules temps. Mine has one of the temp sensors on it from my water cooling unit and I can hit them with the laser temp sensor. But if you can touch yours and they're only warm your ok. If they start to get hot back off. Do you have one of those memory cooling fans on yours (yet)? I do now that I overoverclock my memory. At 1600 I never needed it but at 1800 and playing BF3 it started to speed up my watercooling unit's fans so I had to put my corsair CMXAF2 on them. I set mine to profile 1 because it gives me the 7-7-7 timings I had to go up to 8-8-8 to run at the 1800 but without the profile they start at 9-9-9 so they're way sloppy to start with. So put them in profile 1 or 2 and then adjust the multiplyer and any other voltages as you see fit. If you're trying the above mentioned settings the memory has been downclocked to be stable, from there you can work on the memory speeds but you want to overclock and stabilize the cpu first. I started there and now I'm on multiplyer 28 X 150 BCLK as I slowly worked my ram up and tried/suceeded in maintaining the cpu at 4.2GHz. Give some things a try and get back to us.

I tried all of the settings you mentioned and was able to go as high as 4.2GHz. My Vcore had to be set to 1.52 since the idle voltage was 1.504 and under load it was 1.488. I hit a core temp of 76 degrees C while running prime95. This is better than when I had simply used 133x32 which had an idle voltage of 1.575V and load of 1.525 with a core temp of 82. I was still able to hit 4.4GHz with a bclk of 133 and run prime95 but my core temps went up fast and my safety kicked in and shut my system down at 85 degrees C. I was unable to boot with at a higher frequency using 133 but I did manage to boot using a bclk of 181@4.53GHz but my idle Vcore was 1.63 so i did not even try to run prime95. I do have a 120mm cooling fan on the side of my case directly above the RAM so cooling shoud not be a problem. I will play around with the settings some more after work. Thanks for the help!

**edit**

Realized I was 20 minutes late leaving for work when I posted that. Anyway, I had my RAM clocked at 1988MHz with a bclk of 142 and ran 4 passes of mtest86 with no erros but as soon as I hit 2000MHz or more things started going crazy. I don't get BSOD my system simply will not boot at all. After a momentary pause before the POST screen, my computer restarts and the BIOS downclocks the RAM to 1066MHz and gives me an error stating overclocking has caused my system to become unstable. All my BIOS timings and voltages are exactly what Patriot states they should be. I am still waiting for Patriot to get back to me about the issue. I filled out the ticket request Friday morning and they state that it will take 24-48 hours for a response. I definately need to do some more reading to figure out exactly what all of the BIOS settings do in regards to overclocking. I would rather know what exactly what I am doing with BIOS setting changes but I am certainly welcome to trying out what others have used.

OK I gave you your 2 days for a response from patriot. Did they give you any advice or anything? Try putting it back to the last setting and up the dram voltage a little and see if that helps. You might need a little more v core also because as you add BCLK the cpu also goes up. I know you know but I gotta say it anyway   If you have to mess with the timings something else is going on. It should definitely run at the rated timings. But the power is one of those things that lots of times needs a little leeway.

A week and no response from Patriot. What sh*tty customer service. Anyway, I joined a forum on the patriot website and got an answer from one of the admins. Apparently, running any RAM at 2000MHz is significantly higher than the 1066MHz that the cpu memory controller operates at so a high qpi/vtt is required. Patriot quotes a qpi/vtt of 1.6V to run at 2000MHz and they say it is dependent on the memory controller in the CPU. They say that some people have reported only being able to run at a max of 1866MHz. I think I got lucky being able to run at 1866MHz right off the start. There is no way that I am running my qpi/vtt in the red to get another 133MHz out of it. After a couple of days, I started getting system freezes and after rebooting, my ram would get downclocked to 1066MHz accompanied by an error stating overclocking has caused my system to be unstable. Prime95 started showing errors at this point also so I started increasing the qpi/vtt until things became stable again and now I have a qpi/vtt of 1.4V and am able to run prime95 for 12 hours with no errors. What a pain in the ass.

**edit**
That is 1866MHz at a qpi/vtt of 1.4. In regards to using 6GB vs 12GB of RAM, while running BF3 and a couple of minor hardware monitoring programs my RAM usage peeked at 5.4GB. I think if anyone is trying to decide between 6 and 12 GB of RAM you may want to go with 12.

I agree, most people are saying that 8 GB's is the new standard. I have triple channel like you so I'm also running 12 GB's