Check compatibility first—790 slots usually support DDR5, but confirm with your motherboard specs.
Check compatibility first—790 slots usually support DDR5, but confirm with your motherboard specs.
I’m developing a new system with a 13th i7, a 790 motherboard, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. Although I’ve seen warnings about running more than two DDR5 sticks, I’m determined to try a four-stick setup for better performance. Questions: - Changing the voltage manually in BIOS seems to help some users reach rated speeds, but most guides focus on 690 boards. Is this approach safe? - Running four sticks without XMP enabled might not be ideal, but it could work temporarily until a BIOS fix is released. These DDR5 boards aren’t designed for two unused slots in the near future, right? Looking forward to your advice!
If you're after just cosmetic items, look for Ram that also produces fake modules for display purposes. I believe Vengeance Pro has done this before, though I'm unsure if they continue doing it in the DDR5 era. Running four genuine modules carries a risk of performance drops at higher speeds, but you should be able to achieve stable operation at lower speeds. The maximum speed you can reach isn't clear, but it's not due to a software bug—it's a result of the underlying technology. Updates might improve performance slightly, but don't depend on them.
It varies by board type. For the MSI Meg series Z790, the maximum speed is 5600mhz with dual rank dimms per channel. If using single rank memory, the optimal speed is around 6400mhz for four sticks according to videocardz.
The worst scenario will be below 5600, the highest officially supported by Intel for single DPC, meaning loading it will be reduced. Anything higher is outside the official range. Still, this isn<|pad|>, and CPU, motherboard, BIOS, RAM setups can behave differently. The result on a specific system remains uncertain until you test it. By the way, I checked for fake DDR5 modules and only found one from V-Color that I’ve never encountered before.
Isn’t it confusing and unnecessary that 790 motherboards all advertise support for speeds over 7000MHz while RAM prices jump to 6800MHz for a higher price? Wouldn’t it be like offering a supercar with a V12 engine but claiming no wheels can exceed 80km/h? If I stick to 4x8GB DDR5 RAM without XMP, would the worst case be 4800-5000MHz performance? If I only bought 4800/5200MHz RAM, would that match the value I paid? Anyone have experience with 4 sticks on a specific 790M motherboard and shared results? Thanks, everyone.
If you think about it as overclocking, it makes sense. XMP makes it easier, but it is running outside Intel spec. You might hit the best speeds ever, you might not. No single company can guarantee it works together outside Intel specs. My Google skills are not strong enough to find the official Intel tables for the speeds but indirectly there is: I'd caution there is usually some factor for 1R or 2R modules also, but this doesn't seem to be mentioned.
I believe these options could work. Two genuine sticks plus two fake ones are a viable setup. I'm not entirely confident about VColour RAM versus more established brands, but the cheaper Kingston FURY 2 sets at 2x8GB at 5200MHz without XMP might be a practical choice. What do you think?