When dealing with already high frequency DDR4 RAM and AMD Ryzen based systems a certain amount of lowered expectations has to be expected. Basically, anything above DDR4-3000 is going to be a crapshoot. Some integrated memory controllers (and Infinity Fabric ‘controller’) are going to be worse than others, making RAM overclocking more chance than anything else. Our particular Ryzen 7 1800X may not fall into the ‘golden chip’ category but based on numerous Ryzen builds it certainly is on the upper end of what you can expect. As such take our results with a grain of salt as you may not be able to replicate them… or may even find them overly conservative. It really will all come down to your Ryzen CPU.
With that taken care of, the Ballistix Tactical DDR4-3000 kit proved to be pretty decent in the overclocking arena given the fact that it is factory overclocked and factory over-volt’ed RAM. Thus, with very little extra voltage we could apply and stick to our own rule of 1.4v being the maximum… there was not much gas left in the tank. So much so that DDR4-3200 proved to be impossible at 1.35v. No combination of extremely loose timings proved to be 100% stable – and if it is not 100% stable it is not a successful overclock. That is how close to maximum Ballistix does for you at the factor.
By slightly boosting the voltage and loosening the timings we were however able to hit DDR4-3200. Albeit at 16-18-18 timings instead of the factory stock of DDR4-3000 with 15-16-16. That certainly is still a decent little boost of 100MHz to the Infinity Fabric… and a big reason DDR4-3200 proved to be more effective in real world scenarios than DDR4-3000.
Though this only tells part of the story, as for some tighter timings are more important than shear speed. With this in mind we also under-clocked this kit to see what it could do. Everything from DDR4-2133 to DDR4-2666 proved 100% stable at 1.2volts at 18-15-15… but pushing the voltage to 1.35 allowed us to tighten things to a whopping 13-14-14! Even pushing to 1.40v proved to be not necessary as that is about as tight as you can get this kit to be and be 100% stable.
To reach DDR4-2800 frequencies with such tight timings required 1.40v and with a bit of effort – if you so choose – you could in all likelihood achieve this timings at DDR4-3000. You may just need to push a touch more voltage to do so… and it will be more RAM lottery than anything else. However, this is downright impressive level of flexibility as it is true plug and play RAM at slower frequencies and yet can go like a scalded cat when pushed. That is pretty much everything anyone could ask for from XXX priced XXX set of RAM. Color us impressed.
