Memory Overclocking

Question

How do I overclock my system memory (DDR3 2000) to 2000MHz?

I recently assembled a new system with the following memory and motherboard:

• Patriot Viper Xtreme 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000) Desktop Memory Model PX534G2000ELK
• ASUS M5A88-V EVO AM3+ AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

The memory is advertised to run at 2000MHz. However, the motherboard has default memory clock settings only up to 1600MHz. It is advertised to be able to "overclock" memory to 2000MHz. The "installation guide" that came with the memory isn't much help:

DRAM Timing Control
DRAM timing is usually set in the following order tCL - tRCD - tRP - tRAS

• tCL = Cas Latency
• tRCD = Ras to Cas Delay or Active to CMD
• tRP = Ras Percentage Time or Precharge to Active
• tRAS = Row Active Time or Active to Precharge or Row Active Delay

So 5 - 5 - 5 - 15 settings will translate to the following: tCL = 2, tRCD = 3, tRP = 2, tRAS = 5

There are a plethora of memory overclock settings in my BIOS. How should I configure them? Pics of my BIOS memory clock settings follow:

Answer 1

Per Patriot Memory product page:

These modules are engineered to reach 2000MHz (PC3-16000) at 9-11-9-27 timings...

Answer 2

Well, technically they are DDR3 1600 chips that are advertised as DDR3 2000, which isn't a true standard. To get 1600 in the first place, they took the AMD bus (200 Mhz) multiply by 2 (cause it is DDR) and multiple by the bus ratio (4, but your screen is covering it up). That's how you get 1600 in the first place. Generally, you up the bus frequency to overclock. I advise caution cause you could make your system unstable.

Since you have no idea how the 2000 Mhz showed up in the first place, I highly recommend you read an overclocker's guide. Overclockers.com has a good guide here.

You need to understand the consequences otherwise you'll spend more time and emotions troubleshooting system reliability than you will gain in performance (which IMHO will be none).