Memory overclocking:
For memory overclocking, we of course kept our Teamgroup Delta RGB 7200 MT/s CL34 kit and its Hynix A-die chips. The idea is to choose the kit that we think has the best overclocking potential. And as you can see, we were not mistaken.
The choice of 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 different brands benefit either from Micron chips or Hynix chips or Samsung chips.
The “key” voltages of DDR5 :
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.
If your PMIC module is not locked, enabling “High DRAM Voltage Mode” will give you access to voltages up to 2 volts.
Let’s go for the overclocking of this DDR5 :
At first, we based ourselves on the 7600 MT/s profile present in the BIOS of our Z790 APEX. This one passes without any problem, so let’s go to 7800, 8000, 8200, … but where will it stop?
So this DDR5 overclocking? The least we can say is that we were not disappointed. Once again, thanks to the Asus team that works on its BIOS regularly and has allowed us to test eight different ones since we received the Maximus Z790 APEX. We were able to reach a frequency of 8450 MHz with aircooling and timings of 34-45-45-30. Until a few weeks ago, we would never have imagined that we could reach these frequencies in aircooling.
Of course, to do this, we had to push the voltages and especially the VDD to 1.66 volt and the VDDQ to 1.67 volt. It is a frequency used for bencher and not for a H24 use. But you should know that several brands should offer soon kits with an XMP at 8000 MT/s. We could probably make a stable profile at 8000 MT/s quite easily by relaxing the timings but that was not the objective here.
On the Geekbench 3.4.4 benchmark we were able to reach a memory score of 16172 points, a score that was unimaginable for us only a few weeks ago.
