Hi.
I didn't want to necropost, so I created a new thread. I have an ASUS Rampage Extreme motherboard and decided to test it with 16GB of RAM. I saw on forums that theoretically it can support 16GB, even though according to the specs it should only support 8 GB. For this, I purchased and installed 4 sticks of Corsair Dominator GT CMT8GX3M2A2000C9, each 4GB, version 5.11 (all identical). After that, the motherboard booted into Windows without any issues, and all 16GB were successfully recognized.
Additionally, I ran tests using HCI Memtest and TestMem5 for several hours to ensure everything was working stably (all tests passed without errors). All of this was done with stock configurations, without any overclocking. However, on the RAM modules I purchased, the rated speed is 2000 MHz with timings 9-10-9-27 at 1.65 V, so I tried to run them using an XMP profile at 2000 MHz. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get 2000 MHz in this configuration; I tried just simply enabling XMP, as well as manually setting the values in the BIOS. I managed to get 500 FSB without any problems, but the memory maxed out at 1800 MHz (if I recall it correctly at 1.9V).
So my question is: what is the problem with not being able to achieve 2000 MHz? Is it an issue with the memory, or is it because all 4 slots are populated, or should I adjust the voltage further? I'm just new to overclocking, so I apologize if this is some kind of dumb question 😅 (so not going to break world records, I just want to figure it out).
CPU – Q9550;
BIOS – Latest;