When choosing RAM memories, most users always pay attention to the speed in MT / s and the main timings. But if you want to take a RAM memory to the next level by overclocking, we need more precise information, such as its chips, its version and of course its ability to overclock under a certain temperature. Therefore, we are going to try to shed a little more light on this issue by using the best DDR4 chips for overclocking.
How to distinguish the chips? How to know how far they can go? Well, this is a complicated task that has required hundreds of hours and study by the community and the manufacturers.
We have to say that there is no practical guide that is infallible, and if there is it is certainly not. And it cannot be because in addition to what we are going to see now, it turns out that there are manufacturers that categorize the same chip and version with two segmentations, which depend on the detected faults.
What does this mean? Well, we can find high-end chips like the Samsung B-Die in cheap memory modules, which after clicking and reading them with Thaiphoon Burner (manual here) we can think that we have won the lottery, but it is not like that.
If the manufacturer is very demanding, as it happens in Intel and AMD, it will do a chip binning and some will stay in faster modules and others in slower modules. The fact is that they buy thousands of chips at a lower price and then classify, creating ranges with, in theory, the same chips of the same range, but that will not reach the same speeds, since some will give errors before others.
With this understood, we are going to know, according to the community, the best DDR4 chips for overclocking.
The best DDR4 chips to overclock, how has your RAM turned out?
Samsung
Within the world of overclocking, shortly after inquiring, the name of B-Die will have come out, and these chips are currently the best to reach high RAM speeds or to tighten timings to the beast.
But they are not the only ones that Samsung has, far from it. In fact, the company has a fairly wide range of chips that are sorted by overclocking capability as follows: B-Die -> E-Die -> D-Die -> S-Die.
As they are the most used, they are also the most well-rounded, so even if you have a B-Die, it is possible that they are second-class. The speeds are the best in the world for now, being able to find binned chips that reach 5 GHz with XMP with really low voltages.
Hynix
We are possibly talking about the second most successful manufacturer when it comes to overclocking DDR4 RAM. Like Samsung, it currently has two types of DDR4 chips: AFR and MFR.
This is partly a lie and we explain ourselves, since there is a third type of chip that is extremely difficult to find at the moment: CFRs. In order of potential for overclocking the ranges would be like this: CFR -> AFR -> MFR.
What can we expect from each of them? From speeds of 3200 MHz to 3400 MHz, a next jump to approximately 3600 MHz and 3800 MHz and finally some CFR chips that achieve 4000 MHz or more. These are speeds according to the BMI for a normal or moderately aware user of serious overclocking issues, the problem is that the voltages used by these chips are very high: between 1.45v as a minimum and 1.7 volts as a maximum.
Micron
They are the least representative and many can hardly be squeezed to climb. We just named them because many of you will have low-end memory with these chips. Unfortunately there are not enough reviews and data under BMI or Runmemtest Pro to affirm the potential upward range.
What order do the best DDR4 chips follow?
This is a great question, since as we see Samsung dominates the market simply by number of models. If we take into account the average quality of your NAND Flash and the overclocking ability, the list would be very similar to this: B-Die -> CFR -> E-Die -> AFR -> MFR -> D-Die -> S -Die -> Micron
This is by no means an infallible guide, there are many variations that influence, from the motherboard and its contact lines and voltage, to the number of PCB layers, power lines or dissipation of the modules.
Therefore, each kit is a world and to have a much more approximate idea of the overclocking potential that they may have, we must look for information in specialized forums, where the community publishes specific data and thus be able to discern if with the cooling and ventilation used by users, we will be able to reach those levels, or we will simply be at ease.
Do not forget that no matter how fast the RAM reaches, as much as there are better DDR4 chips, the one that leads the way is the BMI , since it will be in charge of setting the current limit.