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It is hardly possible to find a person who is interested in computer hardware and uses Ryzen processors, who would not encounter memory overclocking, since it is this action that can significantly improve system performance. Three years later, AMD users have reached a new level of knowledge and have become more advanced in this matter, which is undoubtedly nice to see. In this article, we will continue our excursion into the world of RAM overclocking, I will tell you about new presets for memory based on Samsung B-die chips, as well as about the sensational Micron E-die. Practice will be carried out on three Corsair products at once, namely: Vengeance RGB Pro, Vengeance LPX and Dominator Platinum RGB.
Why Corsair? Firstly, we never evaluated the capabilities of this memory, the notorious G.Skill flashed all the time and everywhere. Secondly, this company has not only very stylish solutions, but also technologically advanced ones, which you, in fact, will see for yourself.
test stands
Test stand #1:
- processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X;
- motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero WI-FI (UEFI v1302);
- memory #1: Corsair Vengeance LPX 4133С19;
- Memory #2: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3600C18;
- graphics card: Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX Vega 64;
- drive #1: Samsung 960 Pro 512GB (OS);
- drive #2: Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen4 SSD 2TB;
- power supply: Corsair HX750i;
- CPU Cooler: EKWB Supremacy EVO AMD;
- pump: EKWB XRES 140 Revo D5;
- radiator: EKWB CoolStream CE 360 + Vardar EVO 120ER;
- Subject: Fractal Design Meshify S2;
- operating system: Windows 10 x64 1909;
- chipset driver: AMD 2.01.15.2138.
Test stand #2:
- Processor: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X;
- motherboard: ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme (UEFI v0807);
- memory #1: Corsair Dominator Platinum 3600C16;
- memory #2: G.Skill Trident Z 3000C14;
- video card: ASUS ROG-STRIX-RTX2080-O8G-GAMING;
- drive #1: Samsung 970 Pro 512GB (OS);
- drive #2: Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen4 SSD 2TB;
- power supply: Corsair AX1600i;
- VK cooling: EKWB Quantum Vector Strix RTX 2080 D-RGB – Nickel;
- CPU Cooler: EKWB Velocity sTR4;
- pump: EKWB XRES 140 Revo D5;
- radiators: EKWB CoolStream CE 420 (2 radiators) + Vardar EVO 140ER White BB;
- Case: Thermaltake The Tower 900
- operating system: Windows 10 x64 1909;
- chipset driver: AMD 2.01.15.2138.
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3600С18 32GB (CMW16GX4M2Z3600C18)
A budget solution that does not require fictitious flattering words, it really looks very solid.
The casing, which is also a kind of radiator, is made of black, brushed thin aluminum with a fine coating of the same black color to give the product a carbon fiber effect. An important point is the full contact of the chips with the heatsink, which significantly improves heat dissipation, and also makes the heating temperature uniform for all chips. This will allow you not to worry during overclocking due to local overheating of the board, thereby bypassing thermal resonance, which affects the appearance of random errors during long runs in stress tests or many hours of battles in shooters. On top of the module is an RGB lighting strip, which consists of 10 bright LEDs, which ensures smooth gradients and high brightness. The backlight connection is implemented in the same way as before, without any additional cables. The backlight can be easily adjusted using Corsair iCUE or other software like ASUS Aura.
A very pleasant surprise for me was the presence of a temperature sensor, which undoubtedly adds value to this product in the eyes of enthusiasts.
The PCB has the latest revision A2 (not A0, which according to Thaiphoon Burner is not true), which is great news for overclockers. The Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3600C18 has a single XMP profile with rather high timings and a standard 1.35V voltage, which may not sound like a very tasty proposition to a potential buyer. Fortunately, all the charm of this kit is hidden in the technical capabilities of overclocking or optimization.
In two clicks, the XMP profile was immediately accepted friendly on board the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero WI-FI board. No double starts or long boring workouts. The first runs of stress tests showed that the profile is completely stable and I moved on to assessing the memory overclocking abilities. To do this, it is enough to reduce the operating voltage with the XMP profile without changing the timings, observing the main condition – stability. And for me it was a big surprise to see it at 1.2 V! It was not possible to lower the voltage lower, since this value, according to AMD, is already too low.
The next step was the maximum optimization of the XMP profile with the adjustment of all timings to obtain maximum system performance. At the same time, based on previous experience, I wanted to keep within the standard voltage of 1.35 V. The following came out:
The 3600C15 mode with GearDown Disabled 1T is a fantastic result for budget memory, while the secondary timings also turned out to be notably clamped. The minimum tRFC turned out to be only 292ns, which, in fact, is a distinctive feature of any Micron E-die chips. In order to demonstrate what such optimization gave, I conducted complex testing in the most relevant tasks for most users (I did not use render packages in the tests, since they are never affected by overclocking RAM).
Further clamping of tCL is possible, but it will not bring any result to the user, since tRC equal to 58 is already a limit value and further reduction is not possible. Let me remind you that tRC is partly the sum of tCL/tRCDRD/tRP and characterizes the lifetime of a row before a new row can be opened for reading or writing. A kind of timing watchman who will not let you into the dorm before 7 in the morning, even if you came at 6 after the party. Conventional, but I think you get the point. Of course, there are mechanisms that allow you to optimize the recharging time of banks and thereby save tRC, but this is definitely not about this generation of Micron E-die. And it was precisely because of tRC that I did not decide to take out the profile with either CL14 or CL15 in the consolidated test, limiting myself to CL16.
As you can see, performance gains after optimization range from 5% to an impressive 49% for synthetics. Of course, not everywhere you can see such a miracle, but you are guaranteed to get a nice 15% in tasks that use AVX. Also, this optimization did not deprive gamers. To get closer to the average performance of users, a video card based on the Radeon RX Vega 64 was chosen, as well as a resolution of 720p, in order to avoid the bottleneck in the form of emphasis on the performance of the video card. Gaming comfort depends not only on the maximum fps in high resolution, but also on the moments when the processor “chokes” (the graphics card load percentage decreases) due to poor game optimization by developers or the banal stupidity of the thread scheduler in the Windows operating system itself. Such “flooding” is not always referred to as 0.1% of the event (freezes), there are simply drawdowns at the minimum fps or a mediocre level of game performance in general, which is usually estimated by the average number of frames per second. I relied on them in testing. For lovers of graphs and clarity without a bunch of numbers, I prepared the following picture.
But that’s not all, the coveted 3800 MHz with CL16 is also available to this kit. And the operating voltage is still the same low – 1.37 V.
The only thing? what catches the eye is the unusually large tRCDRD. I would like to note that the value of 21 may not be enough for some old kits that have a printed circuit board revision different from A2. Here I will give a little hint: when choosing memory on Micron E-die chips, always pay attention to the presence of two groups of four chips each, which are soldered on a PCB, this automatically indicates that we are not dealing with revision A0.
I did not forget about the fans of 4×8 GB bundles. A couple of distinguishing features of these presets are: increased voltage to 1.39 V due to a voltage drop due to the physical presence of four modules, tWRRD at level 3, tWR – 16 and RTT_NOM equal to RZQ / 7 (34). I also used a 120mm fan to cool a multi-colored sandwich consisting of four modules.
That’s it with Micron E-die and we’re moving on to the next set of RAM.
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