DDR5 Overclocking Officially Pops Off: 10600 MT/s on Air, 13010 MT/s Under LN2
Memory performance is a critically overlooked part of system performance among client users, especially gamers, and the reason is because memory overclocking is both tedious and risky, as it can produce silent data corruption even if an overclock seems stable. That's why we require extensive validation before considering a memory overclock to be "valid." Two new records have just appeared, so we're going to report on both of them: G.SKILL reaching a phenomenal 10.6 GT/sec on the AM5 platform, and German overclocker sergmann hitting a stunning 13.01 GT/sec on a Core Ultra 9 285K.
First up: the G.SKILL achievement, because it's arguably the more impressive of the two despite the lower transfer rate. It was done using air cooling, and all of the six Zen 4 CPU cores of the Ryzen 5 8500G processor were enabled. So saying, you could actually play games on this system configured this way. The timings are pretty tight, too, with a 1T command rate and a CAS latency of just 50 cycles.
G.SKILL didn't say who performed this achievement, but whoever they are, they managed to crank out this over-10-Gigabit memory speed using a relatively affordable ASUS motherboard and a kit of Trident Z5 Royal Neo DDR5 RAM rated for just 6000 MT/s. You see, that's the secret, kids—almost all of the RAM out there is using just a very small handful of memory packages. The rating on the RAM kit is just what it was verified to run; it's very likely your memory will go faster than it's marked down for.
AMD Ryzen 5 8500G 5.0 Ghz 6-core Zen 4 APU: $164.95 at Amazon
G.SKILL Trident Z5 Royal Neo Series 2×24GB DDR5-6000 CL26: $349.99 at Amazon
G.SKILL Trident Z5 Royal Neo Series 2×24GB DDR5-8000 CL40: $269.99 at Newegg
(Sorry, the motherboard isn't available yet in the US!)
If you'd like to try and replicate G.SKILL's achievement, here's the requisite hardware: the Ryzen 5 8500G is a tiny little processor based on Phoenix 2, with two Zen 4 cores and four Zen 4c dense cores. It also has a surprisingly competent integrated GPU with just four RDNA 3 compute units. We'd love to see this hot-clocked memory paired with a bigger Ryzen 7 8700G. The chip was installed in an ASUS B850M AYW Gaming OC Wi-Fi 7 motherboard, and the specific memory kit used was a Trident Z5 Royal Neo DDR5-6000 bundle, although we pulled out this much hotter-clocked pack over at Newegg that's actually cheaper. Both are likely based on the same DDR5 DRAM ICs, so take your pick.
Meanwhile, over in Germany, hardcore overclocker sergmann was pouring LN2 on his Core Ultra machine's memory slots to take a global first place on the HWBOT rankings for memory overclocking with a scorching speed of 13010 MT/s, or 13.01 Gbps. In the strictest sense, he's not actually the first to do this; another overclocker named Salty Croissant hit 13020 MT/s a couple of weeks ago. However, he didn't manage to get that score onto HWBOT, while sergmann did, which means he gets the credit for the achievement.
This result was much more in line with what you expect from extreme overclocking: most of the CPU cores were disabled, leaving just two Lion Cove P-cores and two Skymont E-cores enabled on the Arrow Lake package. He also only used a single stick of RAM, and an exotic Gigabyte Z890 AORUS Tachyon Ice motherboard intended for exactly this use case, with only a pair of memory slots and extremely well-shielded traces for them.
Intel Core Ultra 9 285K 5.7 Ghz 24-core Desktop CPU: $529.99 at Amazon (12% off)
Gigabyte Z890 AORUS Tachyon Ice Motherboard: $599.99 at Amazon
Corsair Vengeance 2×24GB DDR5-8000 CL38 Memory Kit: $374.99 at Corsair
If you'd like to try your hand at replicating or beating sergmann's score, we're sure he'd welcome the challenge. The parts above are what you need: the Core Ultra 9 285K processor, on a decent discount from its MSRP, the aforementioned Gigabyte Z890 AORUS Tachyon motherboard, and the specific Corsair memory kit that he used—albeit that he only used one stick of the pair. Even if you're not keen on extreme overclocking, this is still a very solid system setup that sets you on the path for high performance with Intel's Core Ultra 200S Boost mode enabled.
While these results are phenomenal, gamers looking for the greatest gains are best off reaching a reasonable transfer rate—around 6,000 to 7,000 MT/s—and then tuning for the lowest memory latency possible by slowly ratcheting down timings. Games don't typically benefit much from main memory bandwidth gains, but system memory latency tuning can absolutely improve the worst-case frame times for your gaming experience. What's your best memory overclocking record? Sound off like you've got a pair (of DIMMs) in the comments.
