Timing and Frequency Scaling

I also test modules for voltage required and different CAS settings to show how well a manufacturer has binned their modules, and how well they've optimized them for the best possible performance. Would tighter timings and a lower speed make this module perform better? Can we increase or decrease voltage and get more performance? When overclocking, there are many different considerations that must be taken and this test helps make a few of those choices.







I took a slightly different approach with these Corsair modules when it came to clock and CAS testing. Since this is a very expensive kit, and a big part of that price is expected overclocking flexibility, I installed an Airflow fan and an Airflow Pro Parametric display to get an easy visual on DIMM temperatures, before cranking the voltage to 1.75 V and tightened the primary timings as much as I could at each ram divider. Clearly, there's a lot of BLCK flexibility with these sticks, but you do need to go fairly far to get the performance to toe-up, and not every module is going to be as flexible as the Dominator Platinum kits are.

I took it one timing at a time, starting with CAS Latency before tightened it up as much as possible until it stopped booting. I then repeated the same process for tRCD, tRP, and tRAS. tRAS was weird because it seemed to have more of an affect on long-term stability in gaming, yet I am not sure if that is due to the motherboard, the CPU, or the memory, so take the information as you will.

I could not boot with anything less than CAS 8. In hindsight, after I completed testing, this was probably due to me not changing tWCL, as the two, CAS and tWCL, do have a relationship with each other. It might, as such, be possible to tighten the CAS with for the 2000 MHz and 1800 MHz dividers if your motherboard offers the ability to adjust things, and mine certainly did not when left to automatic settings. Again, I'm not 100% sure why this happened, but you might find it useful with your own memory overclocking.

I also want to mention that I could run 2000 MHz with 9-9-9-27 1 timings at a very reasonable 1.65 V on the Intel X79 Express platform, making these sticks a great match for some i7 3820 overclocking. I was not able to get 2666 Mhz working on the X79 platform, but I didn't spend too much time with it. I was also able to run the stock speeds on my ASUS Maximus V Formula at just 1.6 V, a good sign that there was going to be some decent overhead in these sticks.

As always, results will vary with every sample and every hardware combination, and the results here are only meant to serve as a guideline.