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We've created screen cast covering the basics of overclocking. This is part two which goes more in-depth on overclocking including XMP, bios settings, overclocking software, benchmarks and overclocking forums. Content on this page requires a newer version of Adobe Flash Player.

Since I started working at Corsair in late 2009, one of my personal goals has been to break the memory frequency world record. I started to seriously pursue this goal in August 2010 with the launch of the CMGTX6 Dominator GT DDR3 memory. I was able to overclock one of those DIMMs to 2976MHz but was unable to go higher due to a CPU limitation. You can read about my previous world record Domintaor GT memory run in a previous post on the Corsair blog. Over the past year I have tried over 20 different processors in hopes of being able to run higher and go after the world record for memory frequency. Up until last week I was using the Intel P55 platform to go after the frequency world record. However I noticed that the new AMD Bulldozer CPUs overclocked memory really well, so I went out and got an ASUS Crosshair V Formula and an AMD FX-8150 processor. I cooled the processor and memory using liquid nitrogen. On the CPU I used a K|ngP|n Gemini CPU pot and a K|ngP|n Dominance memory pot on the CMGTX6 DIMM. You can read how I broke my previous personal best for memory frequency in a previous post. After swapping out to a second Bulldozer CPU things looked even more promising. After several sessions of overclocking I was finally able to break 3400MHz memory frequency barrier which was just shy of the world record by 43MHz. Getting those last few MHz was really tough! After countless blue screens and crashes I was able to get 3467.8MHz however the CPUz validation was corrupt. I had the screenshot but it was useless without the validation. I continued to test and after an hour of blue screens I was able to get the validation file with the memory at 3467.8MHz and take the world record!!!. You can see the CPUz validation here and more information on the result here.

Towards the end of May this year we launched our Dominator® GT CMGTX7 DDR3 memory upgrade kit. This kit consists of two 4GB memory modules for a total of 8GB of memory. They are rated at 2400MHz 9-11-10-30, which make it the fastest 8GB production DDR3 memory kit available. The last time I overclocked high density modules was when I was testing the 16GB Vengeance kit, which overclocked to 1921.8MHz. You can read more about my earlier Vengeance overclocking run on the Corsair Blog. Since I love pushing components to their limits I wanted to see what the new Dominator GT kit could do. I started off with one of my favorite motherboards for memory overclocking, the GIGABYTE™ GA-P55A-UD4P along with an Intel® Core™ i7-870 Processor. For the cooling I was using a single stage phase change unit to cool the CPU. This is very similar to your refrigerator however it cools only the CPU, it can get the processor as cold as -40°C. Later on in the testing I used a liquid nitrogen container by K|ngP|n Cooling to cool down the memory. This special container called the Dominance Memory Cooler was specifically designed to fit on top of the Corsair Dominator memory modules. The rig was powered by a single Professional Series™ Gold AX1200 power supply and for the SSD I used a 120GB Force Series™ drive. I started off by testing the maximum frequency I could run at the stock timings. After about an hour of testing I was able to reach a frequency of 2508MHz. This was a 108MHz overclock that ran without any issues. After reaching 2500MHz I wanted to go even faster. So I decided to test the modules with looser timings and go for the absolute maximum speed. I started out by going to 2550MHz, then to 2600MHz. I was shocked to see the GTX7 kit hitting these kinds of frequencies, especially because this was a high density kit running in dual channel mode. I wasn't about to stop there though, I kept on pushing and soon was breaking 2700MHz! I asked myself could it do 2800MHz? I kept on pushing and hit a wall at 2796.2MHz, less than 4MHz shy of 2800MHz. Knowing that I was not going to be able to sleep unless I hit 2800MHz with this kit, I had to do something to get those last few MHz. I took the extended fins off the modules and mounted the Dominance Memory Cooler on top of the Dominator GT memory and filled it with liquid nitrogen. Cooling the memory helped the memory modules get that last little bit and I ended up with a frequency of 2819.8MHZ! I was completely blown away by the results, considering reaching this frequency previously meant you had to use a single module! I not only achieved that result with two memory modules in dual channel, but I did it with a high density kit. To put this in perspective this is only 156MHz shy of what I had previously reached with a single Dominator GT CMGTX6 module. You can go back and read about that CMGTX6 overclock run to 2976MHz on the Corsair Blog too.