Overclocking on our Z790 APEX:
Choosing your DDR5 kit according to the memory chips:
As it was already the case for DDR4, if you want to clock your memory, some brands will have a better potential. Currently, the kits announced by the various brands benefit either from Micron chips or Hynix chips or Samsung chips. The latter two brands will be the most interesting. Our GSKill Trident Z5 RGB 6400 MT/s CL32 kit is equipped with Hynix chips as you can see. But be careful, there are Hynix M-die chips, the first ones that came out, but especially today Hynix A-die chips that allow to go up in frequency more easily.
We can not totally make a generalization, but in most cases, the kits between 6000 and 6400 MT/s are in Hynix M-die and from 6600 MT/s, they are almost all Hynix A-die. As you can see, our kit is a model with M-die chips.
DDR5 “key” voltages:
For memory overclocking, there are 5 key voltages. These are the voltages that will have an impact on the overclocking and therefore on the frequency rise or the tightening of the timings. These are the CPU System Agent Voltage (SA), the DRAM VVD Voltage, the DRAM VVDQ Voltage, the Memory Controller Voltage and the IVR Transmitter VVDQ Voltage. Here is where these voltages are located in the BIOS of our ROG Maximus Z690/Z790 APEX.
Attention, depending on the type of memory chips (Micron, Hynix and Samsung), the balance between these different voltages is different. Don’t panic, we will come back to this in our guide on overclocking Alder Lake and DDR5. If your PMIC module is not locked, by activating ” High DRAM Voltage Mode “, you will have access to voltages up to 2 volts. Let’s go for the overclocking of this DDR5 from GSKill.
Step 1: increase the XMP frequency
The first idea is to increase the memory frequency from 7000 to 7200 MT/s. Our two benchmarks, Geekbench 3 and Geekbench 5, pass without any problem but the performance gain is only a few percent. Beyond this frequency, it is impossible to start the configuration. Asus, which is used to proposing memory profiles in its BIOS, does not propose anything here. In short, as we suspected, overclocking Micron chips is almost impossible beyond 7000 MT/s.
