How to over clock RAM in windows 8.1

How to over clock RAM in windows 8.1

Over clocking RAM:

You will see very little benefits for daily use (mail, internet, office). You might be able to squeeze a couple of frames in some games but it won't change your gaming experience and blow you out of the water. I think it mostly helps very memory intensive applications for workstations etc. Otherwise it’s not as noticeable. Overclocking RAM has the most benefit when you are dealing with large files and need greater throughput/bandwidth. In basic terms, the idea of overclocking RAM is to allow the computer to process more at a single time. For example, a passenger car can transport 5 people MAX at a time. So let's say you need to transport them 400 miles away, only 5 total people can go at a time. Overclocking the RAM is like using a van that can transport 8 people at a single time. So instead of moving 5 people, you can move 8 at a time now. Whether or not you need to transport 8 at a time depends on you. In terms of computing, if you are just gaming, browsing the internet, etc., any computer can do that with basic RAM. You don't need high speed RAM to do that, so you will not notice much of a difference. If you video edit, 3D render, sound, and so on, where you deal with gigabytes of files at a time, then that is when you will notice a significant difference in performance. Back to the analogy, if you had to transport a total of 50 people 400 miles, 8 people at a time would be much faster than 5 people. If you only have 4 people to transport, it doesn't really matter if you use a passenger car or van, both would work. A reason some people don't notice a difference with RAM overclocking is because they do not overclock the CPU. CPUs are designed for standard DDR3-1600 RAM, so if you want to take full advantage of overclocked RAM (better than DDR3-1600), you must overclock CPU and NB frequency as well. It's like having a van with only 5 seats in it, you can still only transport 5 people at a time even though there is more space! Lastly, overclocking RAM is safe if you can do it correctly. It is not a major concern because if you use bad settings, generally a system would not POST, and you just need to re-configure to settings that can work. Or if the system does work with bad settings, it will just produce error over time and you need to RMA the RAM, but at least you are covered by lifetime warranties (many RAM companies). If you are a real stupid overclocker, and you like to force stupid settings like 1.90V instead of 1.65V for DRAM to see if it can be stable, it possible to fry the pins and void warranty. So always read up and follow experienced user's advice and generally you should not have a problem.

Over clocking CPU:

The advertised speed of your CPU is calculated by multiplying the base clock rate by a multiplier. To get more performance from your processor, you need to increase one of these two variables.

1. If you don't have an unlocked processor (Intel's K-Series and Extreme Edition, or AMD's Black Edition), you'll have less flexibility, as unlocked processors offer more multipliers to adjust. But you'll still be able to get some extra mileage out of your CPU. We tried overclocking a test machine running one of Intel's unlocked K-Series chips, a Core i7-2600K CPU running at a base speed of 3.4GHz (that number is the product of the processor's base clock rate, 99.8MHz, times the multiplier, 34). With K-Series chips, you can easily modify the multiplier from the ‘Performance' settings in your BIOS. Just boot into the BIOS, increase the CPU multiplier number by one, save, and boot into Windows. If this boot doesn't produce error messages or furious restarting by your machine, you're on the right path. Check your system specs via CPU-Z to confirm that your settings held-they can be lost if something goes wrong during the tweaking process. On CPU-Z's ‘CPU' tab, look at the number under ‘Core Speed and Multiplier'. That number will fluctuate, depending on what your PC is doing from moment to moment.

2. Next, run a benchmark utility to stress-test your CPU's new configuration. Use Prime95's Torture Test mode or Linx to push your PC to its limits, thereby giving you an idea of your system's maximum clock speed. If your computer remains free of blue screens or sudden restarts after a few hours of number-crunching with one of these tools, you're probably in the clear. Then you can stick with the current overclocking settings, or try again with a slightly faster speed.