Stock Clocks and What ASUS Offered

So, what happens when you install these sticks? Well, of course, you're going to need to enable XMP. When you do, you'll be greeted with one of the two messages shown above. Which one you see will depends on which BIOS version you are running on your ASUS TUF board. I have to give a bit of recognition to ASUS here for offering this type of option since I complained about how they dealt with CPU clocks and XMP in the past. I ran a default Turbo profile here.



So this is what I saw once I booted into the OS. Default CPU clocks on my i5-8400 are in use, but the memory is up to 3600 MHz as it should be.


Here's what enabling XMP changed within the BIOS. It's worth noting that the VCCSA voltage was set to almost 1.4 V... a setting I personally find a bit too high. This isn't a fault of the sticks; that's something done by the board itself.


One of the features this board offers is the ability to test your system for you for some automatic overclocking it then applies. I tried out this feature with the G.SKILL sticks installed and was disappointed to find that the board dropped memory speeds down to 3000 MHz with default timings. I had hoped to see the board clock the CPU up the little bit it could while keeping the memory at 3600 MHz, but it didn't. Since these sticks are supposed to be tuned for use with this exact board, I thought it prudent to investigate this, but was left with a sour taste in my mouth from what ASUS has to offer here. This is also NOT due to the Sniper X sticks.