Test System

Testing Rated Speeds

Getting these DIMMs working right off the bat wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard either. Going into the BIOS and simply enabling XMP results in a code "55" being displayed on the board's POST display. I had to go into the BIOS and adjust the board's VRM settings to allow for a bit more power to get the DIMMs to boot successfully. That means I increased the current limits for the DIMM slots, not that I adjusted any voltages. Given the high speed of these G.Skill TridentZ sticks, that seems like a pretty basic change to have to make.


When it came to overclocking, I was quite impressed. Given that just enabling XMP did not work for "stock" with these 3866 MHz sticks, I did not expect much scaling frequency-wise. However, I reached 4000 MHz with ease, and was also easily able to lower timings without any adjustments to the DIMM voltage. So instead of running 3866 MHz with 18-22-22-42 timings, I ran 18-19-19-42 @ 4000 MHz! That reduced overall latency by nearly 2.4 ms, which is quite noticeable when benchmarking! I was able to boot at these speeds without any problems at all, but going any higher resulted in weird board behavior. Either my CPU is not capable of pushing further at ambient temperatures or the motherboard is not. I suspect it is a combination of both. I was able to fully complete my testing and ran games at these speeds for nearly a month before I realized I had forgotten to reset the overclock! Oops. That just goes to show how well-binned these sticks are by G.Skill, however.