Z170 Extreme4+ overclocking noncompatible dram

24nitro wrote: Hello guys, new to this forum. I recently acquired a Z170 extreme 4+ mb and it has these crazily specific drams on it, Corsair Dominator Platinum 3400 MHz Limited Orange Edition which were produced specifically for Gigabyte X99-SOC Champion mb. Rams work fine with z170 at JEDEC standard settings, but I was wondering if there is a slight chance of manually fine tuning the quite capable RAMs to higher speeds and from where should I begin with? Thanks in advance!

Have you tried simply applying the XMP profile?

While this model has the XMP profile tuned for the X99/Haswell & Broadwell HEDT processors, Corsair and others market models of DDR4 for both X99 and the Intel 100 series chipset boards, like a Z170.

Since the memory controller is part of the CPU, the main thing that can be done for memory is tuning the UEFI/BIOS specifically for a model of memory. Speeds above 3200 become more difficult for Z170 systems, so that's where the specialized tuning for 3200 becomes important. But no one makes DDR4 memory chips only for one processor or board, so this memory must be able to work over clocked on other boards. The color and specific over clocked tuning are really the main things that make it special for that Gigabyte board.

I would apply the XMP profile, but set the memory speed to say 3000, and see if the PC boots. The XMP profile with set the DRAM voltage to 1.35V, and UEFI will increase the VCCIO and VCCSA voltages. You may not reach 3400, but 3200 should be possible.

Or apply the XMP profile, but set all the memory timings to Auto, and let the UEFI select their values.