Quote Originally Posted by masotime View Post
OK I think I have the right thread this time.

Does anyone know what are the effects of using slower RAM (e.g. normal 1333 Mhz) when overclocking e.g. a i7-2600K on this motherboard?

  • Is real-world performance like on games, video encoding, compression and compiling significantly affected if you use slower RAMs?
  • Will overclocking be limited if you use slower RAM e.g. unable to hit 5Ghz?


My understanding is that since memory is clocked independently of the processor, CPU overclocking should not depend on memory speeds, but it's also possible that slower RAMs = lower memory bandwidth, which may have an effect on overall performance - although my main concern is in daily usage rather than benchmarking.

Thanks in advance.
It will depend on the application. Some applications are memory bandwith limited. In that case the X58 platform is the best choice. But mostly memory speeds do not impact Games and the most standaard appllications much. Applications that need to acces a lot of data in big files will get a boost from fast memory.