Will 1600MHz DDR3 Work With the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R mobo?

[Shando]

I'm interested in getting this board, and there have been conflicting reports regarding the compatibility with 1600MHz DDR3. Can anyone confirm whether this is compatible or not? Thanks

 

[Slaymate]

It will only support 1600 MHz ram by overclocking the cpu host frequency (changing the BCLK).

 

[Shando]

Would that be an easy thing to do? I have no experience with overclocking

 

[Slaymate]

It's not that hard but you'll want to buy an aftermarket heatsink for your cpu as more heat will be generated.

 

[Shando]

What would I have to OC the CPU to in order to get the RAM to work?

 

[Slaymate]

it depends upon the cpu. You would need to increase the BCLK to 160 and then set the memory multiplier to 10 (this may be called something else).

With an i7 920 your cpu speed would be 20x160=3200 or 3.2GHz
i7 930 - 21x160=3360 or 3.36GHz
i7 950 - 23x160=3680 or 3.680GHz
i7 960 - 24x160= 3840 or 3.840GHz

Actually, you can also reduce the multiple on all of these cpu's. As an example, you could run the i7 960 at 20 x160=3200 and still be at the stock speed if you wanted to.