Hi guys Just about ready to bite the bullet and order the remaining parts for my new i5 setup but I have to admit I am lost when it comes to memory (RAM). I plan to overclock the i5-4670K on a MSI Z87-G45-GAMING but I have no real clue what demand this places on the memory? Is there any advantage to speeds above 1600MHz? Should I pay too much care too the timings? Rig will be used for gaming/photoshop. Thanks for any help guys, -Martin
Neither particularly matter for gaming, for photoshop my impression is it will affect it but capacity is more important. I'm no paintshop aficionado but I'm sure some one will come along shortly to either correct me or back me up.
1600 CL9 stuff is fine. If 1866mhz stuff is only a few quid more, then midaswell; just keep to the 1.5V stuff.
Haswell's a little more picky about timings, so if you can try and get CAS8/CAS9. As for memory speeds, well, as many sites have shown, there's very little real world difference between different speeds. Anything at 1600+ is good.
If I remember correctly the speed of ram on the Intel Platforms doesn't really matter apart from benchmarks, but I may be wrong about that. With a AMD APU however the speed makes a big difference. I always just recommend to people that ask me though, just grab some Corsair 1600Mhz CL8 or CL9 and that will be fine however if you can get some 1866Mhz etc for not much more then you might, as well grab the faster ram.
Apps that move large amounts of memory around will benefit a bit from faster memory. Games don't tend to do that (in system RAM), so they don't usually see much, if anything. An APU does it all in RAM, so that's why its graphics get a big boost the faster the memory. 2133MHz RAM is emerging now at more or less the same price as 1600MHz, with decent timings.
I would avoid anything higher than 2000Mhz for overclocking. High RAM speed causes system instability when overclocking.
On Haswell you should be able to run 2133-2400 no problem, OC or not. It's certainly do-able on ASUS boards (ROG has 2nd gen T Topology design). Whether you need to is up to you. What you've got to watch out for is voltage. 1.35V is ideal, but don't go higher than 1.5.