MSI B560 Memory Try It! Overclocking Competition* is in full swing, many B560 users are gearing up and can’t wait to give it a try.

*selected countries/regions only: Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Yemen

Although most of the contestants are pretty familiar with every PC component, we have also prepared a few overclocking guides to give a quick overview. In addition to CPU and GPU, another well-known overclock able component is the Random Access Memory, so the first guide we are going to give you some techniques to identify the specs of a memory, and how to choose the memory for PC build.

Since the competition is the overclocked frequency of memory, the first thing to consider is how well the motherboard & CPU support for the memory frequency. As Intel updates CPU socket to LGA1200, the corresponding DDR4 memory frequency has also been upgraded from the original DDR4-2666 to DDR4-2933, and even increased to DDR4-3200 in the Intel 11th Gen, eliminating the criticism on previous generations of motherboard.

In addition, in terms of motherboards, manufacturers have several built-in memory acceleration technologies. Take MSI for example, the MSI B560 motherboard has DDR4 BOOST technology which allows B560 chipset motherboard to support DDR4-4000frequency and above. As long as the players have DDR4 memory with good quality, it is simple to run at higher frequencies.

When it comes to DDR4 memory on the market, there are tens of thousands of specifications, so read carefully before making decisions.

MSI B560 Motherboard supports DDR4-4000 and above, providing extraordinary compatibility and potential of memory overclocking.

When it comes to choosing a suitable memory, which specs should we pay attention to? As mentioned earlier, the higher DDR4 frequency can usually give better performance. It’s effort-saving to select the memory with the frequency officially certified. Running at an overclocked frequency in XMP mode is also a way to save the time tuning detailed settings, which is also friendly to the user. However there are still some topics worth noting.

For sure, frequency is the first thing a user would pay attention to. While higher frequency often gives better performance, the cost is also higher. At present, the mainstream memory frequency is DDR4-3200 or DDR4- 3600, but if users want to buy DDR4-3200 or less after considering the price, it is also fine. As far as the potential of the memory sold on the market, overclocking at DDR4-3200 is not a problem (most of the time), thus you can take DDR4-3200 as benchmark and give a try.

Users can take DDR4-3200 as benchmark when choosing the memory.

The same frequency may not have the same performance, the details are hidden in the CL (Latency) timing

In addition to frequency, Timings (Latency) is also important. The memory will be marked with a series of numbers that look like a lottery number, such as CL18-18-20-43, etc. Each number represents the latency time of the memory in each working mode. Theoretically, the lower the number, the less the latency of response, but lower timingis harder to stably support higher frequency. Therefore, memory with high frequency and low timing usually represents the inherent advantages of memory chips. Samsung B-Die and Hynix CJR are two of the representatives. Additionally, the tuning of a manufacturer is also crucial to the final performance.

In addition to frequency, Timingsare also deciding factors when choosing memory.

Currently, most ATX motherboards provide four memory slots (4 DIMMs), and a single memory slot can support up to 32GB of memory, and of course the larger capacity of a single DIMM, the more expensive it is. It is not recommended that users buy a single 32GB of memory unless there’s no special requirement. So two questions arise when buying memory: How much memory should I buy? Should I buy a large-capacity one or multiple small-capacity ones?

The choice of capacity mainly depends on the usage and performance expectations. If you just surf on the net and make reports using Office, 8 GB is enough, but if you want to play game and streaming at the same time, it is recommended that 16 GB or more; and if it is used for content creation purposes, because the temp files and software easily eat uplots of memory, the larger capacity the better. In addition, if you decide to go for 16GB, a dual channel 8GBx2 is highly recommended single it has larger data throughput; if you are considering upgrading to a larger capacity in the near future, you can buy one single 16GB DIMM for now.

The choice of memory capacity depends on the needs of the users. Generally speaking, 8GB is sufficient for most Office use.

Basically, plugging the memory into the motherboard won’t make it run at the desired frequency. By default, the memory will only operate at its native frequency, so users must also go to UEFI (BIOS) to adjust the settings. However, since it is too much trouble to find and set parameters in BIOS, Intel has introduced a convenience feature: XMP (Extreme Memory Profile). With XMP, manufacturers can store the profile in the memory in advance. Users only need to turn the XMP function on in BIOS to apply it to activate.

Even if the memory supports XMP, the motherboard and processor must support it at the same time so it can run at the overclocked frequency.

Another thing is the voltage. The standard voltage of DDR4 is 1.2V, but most of the current DDR4 memory on the market is set between 1.3 ~ 1.35V. Although the voltage setting is automatically applied in XMP mode, users can also set manually in the BIOS options. If you want to increase the frequency, you can also increase the voltage accordingly (the voltage is subject to the upper limit provided in the BIOS).

Due to the rise of gaming, more and more memory modules on the market come with gaming spirit. In addition to the design for heat dissipation (there are various design styles of heat sink), some also have RGB lighting. If paired with a motherboard and other components which also have lighting effects, the whole set is indeed quite eye-catching, but this kind of “aesthetic” is subjective after all. Whether you are an advocate for RGB lighting, the main consideration in terms of design is whether it fits with other components since the shape of the heat sink and the light might make the module too large.

The memory with fancier look often comes at higher price. Users can choose based on the budget. As far as pure DDR4 performance is concerned, perhaps a simple heat sink design is enough. As for going for lighting effects, you can also control/sync the RGB lighting with software, such as MSI Mystic Light, and personalize your own lighting effects.

High temperature will also hinder overclocking performance, so the heat sink is also a deciding factor to purchase decision.

Of course, there will be other guides to share with you how to tune in BIOS. MSI has provided various functions in this regard which make overclocking simpler and more interesting, so stay tuned!