Gigabyte p55 UD3L with OCZ DDR3 PC12800

[pedro5]

Hey I went to microcenter and talked through which mobo, ram and cpu to get for my upgraded rig and I came up with the core i5 750, gigabyte p55 UD3L, and OCZ 4 gigs DDR3 PC12800 low voltage dual channel.

The RAM was suggested by the salesman as if it was handsdown the best and guaranteed to work... but before installing I double checked and noticed the mobo doesn't say anthing about supporting 1600mhz... anyone know if it will work fine or should I make the 90 min drive there and back from microcenter to get a new board or new RAM?

-also I checked the gigabyte website for added RAM support etc and noticed it DOES support OCZ DDR3 PC12800 BUT it had "PN:OCZ3G1600LV6GK" and mine says "PN: OCZ3G1600LV4GK"

-any recommendations? - otherwise I might just try it out and see if it works...and bring everything back if the RAM fries/mobo fries etc (which I doubt would happen - itd prob just shutdown the system or not boot correct?)

(also for a 1 GPU solution the core i5 750 is pretty much just fine if not overkill even for the very best 1 card out there correct? $40 more for the core i7 870 worth it on a board only able to support 1 GPU at full speed?)

thanks in advance guys! - quite a few questions haha

 

[ekoostik]

With an i5 750, the fastest you can run RAM on any motherboard without OCing your CPU is 1333 MHz. So to get to 1600 MHz you'll have to OC - change your bclk, cpu multiplier and spd memory multiplier.

 

[pedro5]

thanks, and for ocing on air with the stock cooler what would the recommended RAM/CPU OC be? I want to shoot for a 3.4-3.6 on stock, is that possible/safe? then I wanna do 4-4.2 with a good afterstock later on.

any advice on OCing the core i5 system would be greatly appreciated or just tips on the differences between OCing core i5 and LGA 775 (what I used to have and OC on)

Thanks in advance all!

 

[ekoostik]

An i5 750 with a multiplier of 20 means you'd need to set bclk to 170 to hit 3.4GHz. At that point you'd hit 10 x 170 = 1700 MHz on the RAM, or you could use the 8x multiplier and hit 8 x 170 = 1360 MHz. Is that doable with the stock cooler? I believe so. Been a while since I've read up on it though. Look around here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-29.html

Also, this may be of interest: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/257258-29-what-speed-overclock-4ghz

 

[pedro5]

I'm kinda of a newbie ... what's "BCLK"? (like FSB but dif tech?)

so let me get this right... if I do 20x200 = 4000 = 4 ghz

my RAM will need to run at 10x200 = 2000 = 2ghz?

and therefore with my 1600 mhz memory I cannot overclock my CPU to 4 gigs?

or can the multiplier be unlocked and used at x10 (x20 in fact) for the CPU
and x8 for the memory?

200x20 = 4 ghz
200x8 = 1.6 ghz

?? - what would I have to do ultimately to achieve 4.0 I guess is my ultimate question - and should the memory be linked or unlinked to the CPU clock for best OC?

(I did read those last articles and I guess I'm still quite befuddled)

Thanks again in advance guys!

 

[ekoostik]

The CPU and memory multipliers can be set separately, available memory multiplers are 6, 8 and 10 (There's some lower ones as well). So, your last half of your last post is right on. You can set the memory multiplier to 8, so that when raising the bclk to 200 your ram will run at 1600 MHz while your CPU hits 20x200 = 4 GHz.

 

[pedro5]

alright thanks very much ekoostic!