HWBOT, there’s still plenty
of tuning opportunity with
this LPX kit. For instance, the
highest frequency that could
be stabilized with this kit
was 3,866MHz and that was
with a relatively immature
BIOS on the Maximus VIII
motherboard. By now, more
proficient motherboards or
perhaps later BIOS revisions
would potentially see higher
frequencies or better timings.
As usual, the sweet spot
for performance is at the
3,600MHz mark. At this
frequency, the timings could
be kept relatively tight, in
conjunction with a low/safe
operating voltage and no
risk to the DIMMs at all. By
safe, you’ll still be operating
the memory past the rated
1.35V but we have it on good
authority that even 1.45,
perhaps even 1.5V would be
fine for this kit (This is all IC
dependent, a later revision
could use different IC’s
which would invalidate this
statement about safety) for
24/7 use in whatever context.
Fortunately 3,600MHz can
come about with voltages as
little as 1.4V as measured. Do
keep in mind that the BIOS is
unlikely to report the actual
voltage under load, thus it’s
important to measure this
using a DMM where possible.
If you do not have one, assume
the reported reading is lower
than the true voltage. That
aside, 3,600MHz offers the
best bang for buck, managing
to not only maintain the
reference timings but improve
them still with some tuning.
As a result of how the
motherboard and IMC tune
the memory during training,
tWCL remains fairly tight
at 3,600MHz (13). This is
contrast to higher multipliers,
where tWCL is sometimes
as high as 18, robbing you
of performance. In fact
you’re likely to get worse
performance with such
settings than you would at
3,200MHz. Care must be
taken when tuning any set
of memory and particularly
on the Z170 chipset, where
some settings do not have
the expected effect on
Issue 36 | 2015 The OverClocker 29