How high of a ram frequency can i run on a Z690 with an 14700Kf processor?

[Dyno]

Hi, I have a Asus Z690 motherboard and i'm thinking of upgrading the memory. I only have 16GB DDR5 5600Mhz. I want to buy a 32GB kit. So my question is, how high of a memory frequency can i go with this Z690 motherboard and this i7 14th generation intel processor?

 

[ir_cow]

Unless it's a ASUS Z690 APEX or Gigabyte z690 Taychon, chances are you will be hard pressed to get 6800 Stable. I had mixed results. 6600-7000 is the top end of the range. Some MB like ASRock Z690 Tachi can't even run 6000 stable.

The CPU itself is 7600 (bad IMC) to 8600 ( really good IMC). Mine is 8200-8400 depending how much I was to spend time fine tuning CPU voltages.

 

[AleXXX666]

Unless it's a ASUS Z690 APEX or Gigabyte z690 Taychon, chances are you will be hard pressed to get 6800 Stable. I had mixed results. 6600-7000 is the top end of the range. Some MB like ASRock Z690 Tachi can't even run 6000 stable.

The CPU itself is 7600 (bad IMC) to 8600 ( really good IMC). Mine is 8200-8400 depending how much I was to spend time fine tuning CPU voltages.

ASRock's "Taichi" series equals "GB AORUS TACHYON" or ASUS APEX, MSI GODLIKE etc.
They are very good mobos at a price. Don't confuse with "Phantom Gaming". Even though, 32 GB 6000 shouldn't be an issue for Z690 and 14th gen. K CPU.
But, for OP I wouldn't recommend going beyond 6400-6600 range...

 

[JustBenching]

Unless it's a ASUS Z690 APEX or Gigabyte z690 Taychon, chances are you will be hard pressed to get 6800 Stable. I had mixed results. 6600-7000 is the top end of the range. Some MB like ASRock Z690 Tachi can't even run 6000 stable.

The CPU itself is 7600 (bad IMC) to 8600 ( really good IMC). Mine is 8200-8400 depending how much I was to spend time fine tuning CPU voltages.

Unify x can hit 7600 without any hassle. You have to hassle to hit 8k. At least my model does that, dunno if I got lucky

 

[chrcoluk]

Unless it's a ASUS Z690 APEX or Gigabyte z690 Taychon, chances are you will be hard pressed to get 6800 Stable. I had mixed results. 6600-7000 is the top end of the range. Some MB like ASRock Z690 Tachi can't even run 6000 stable.

The CPU itself is 7600 (bad IMC) to 8600 ( really good IMC). Mine is 8200-8400 depending how much I was to spend time fine tuning CPU voltages.

I would love for you to make public somewhere your testing results on a per board basis, I think there is value in this data.

 

[ir_cow]

Some people are bound to be confusing the Z690 and Z790 here. Secondly what can boot vs being stable. I wrote that a lot in my reviews. Very easy to be mistaken. My baseline is If it doesn't pass y-cruncher and at least a hour of Memtest5, that isn't stable enough for gaming.

Most of the Z690 motherboards I reviewed I went back to with a 13900K and DDR5-8000. Pumped up the VDD2, TX and SA to a reasonable high safe levels. Only 4-slot motherboard I remember being stable at DDR-7000 was the MSI Z690 Carbon WiFi. The Z690 Unify I gave away before checking. I'll assume that can do it as well.

I would love for you to make public somewhere your testing results on a per board basis, I think there is value in this data.

It was a article idea in the back of my head for a while. Did some preliminary testing. Which is how I got these numbers in the first place. But since I done reviewing motherboards, all but one Z690 is given away at this point. My Z690 Tachyon went to Mussels who at one point was going to take over the motherboard reviews.

Unify x can hit 7600 without any hassle. You have to hassle to hit 8k. At least my model does that, dunno if I got lucky

That's a two DIMM slot motherboard. So can the Z690 Apex and Z690 Taychon and any ITX.

 

[RootinTootinPootin]

I had a Strix Z690E Gaming Wifi, mas on my 13900KS was 7600MT's everything upto the ODT's were tuned, I used it for a while with my binned 14700KF for my Son's PC and it also maxed at 7600MT's this was on a specific BIOS and microcode (I never updated it to the latest, just enough to support 14th gen on a stable use basis, since I tweak everything manually)

Skill and awareness of what you do is essential on maxing the Z690 Platform (+luck as well)

 

[ir_cow]

@RootinTootinPootin you made a good point. I should have clarified that my preliminaries was just the basic. enable XMP 8000 with everything auto and step down until stable. Next set the voltages and increase until unstable.

Most people aren't willing to type in all the timings manually and stability test for days (including myself). I'll trust you when you say that 7600+ is possible on a z690 4-slot motherboard if you are willing to put the time into it.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

I have an EVGA z690 Classified. It can do 6000 no problem. I bought 7200 at one point to try it and it was a no-go. I tried 6800, 6600 (which I think booted, but wasn't stable) and I decided that trying to get 6400 with looser timings was not going to provide any benefit over 6000-CL30 for the price I had paid and I just went with the 6000-CL30 instead. There were people with the EVGA z690 Kingpin that could do much higher speeds, but not so much on the Classified, which was a bit disappointing. My point being that for z690, it was really only the top boards that could get past the 6000-6400 range and whether or not there was any benefit to the trouble it would take to get them to work is really up to you. My recommendation is to get a 6000-CL30 kit and try that out. You can also see if there's anything on the QVL (not sure which sku you have), but it's likely not updated for more recently released kits that have better timings.

A couple kits to look at:
Teamgroup T-Create Expert CTCED532G6000HC30DC01 - 6000-CL30, $92.99. no RGB.
Teamgroup T-Force Delta FF3D532G6000HC30DC01 - 6000-CL30, $92.99, with RGB.
G.Skill Ripjaws S5 F5-6000J3040F16GX2-RS5K - 6000-CL30, $99.99, no RGB (if you like G.Skill better basically)
Teamgroup T-Force Delta FF3D532G6000HC28ADC01 - 6000-CL28, $119.99, with RGB, if you think that slightly tighter-timings will help you.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Unless it's a ASUS Z690 APEX or Gigabyte z690 Taychon, chances are you will be hard pressed to get 6800 Stable. I had mixed results. 6600-7000 is the top end of the range. Some MB like ASRock Z690 Tachi can't even run 6000 stable.

The CPU itself is 7600 (bad IMC) to 8600 ( really good IMC). Mine is 8200-8400 depending how much I was to spend time fine tuning CPU voltages.

Z690 Prime-A w/e it's called is only good for DDR5 6000mt/s supported. So even past that might be difficult.

Be fine getting a 32GB set of DDR5 at only 5600mt/s and it would be just fine, probably the safest bet.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Most I got out of my MSI MEG Z690 ACE (with 13900KS processor) was 6400. 7000 would not even boot.

Z790 is leagues ahead

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Z790 is leagues ahead

Only on DDR5 though. Had that MSI Z690 D4, it clocked ddr4 4600mt/s no problem!

 

[Dyno]

Thank you for all of your support. It has been a pleasure reading some of your posts. I'm most likely going to settle for a 32GB DDR5 6000MHz kit since this Z690 is going to keep me back from 7000MHz+. My lil' brother games, so i wanted to buy him the highest speed of memory possible. So if this board is going to give me issue from 6400MHz+ then i'll just settle for 6000MHz. I will post results as one of you thought it would be great for data, thanks again.

 

[ir_cow]

Patriot Xtreme memory has 3 xmp profiles. Not the prettiest looking memory, but often priced the same if not better. Might be something to consider.

 

[RootinTootinPootin]

Thank you for all of your support. It has been a pleasure reading some of your posts. I'm most likely going to settle for a 32GB DDR5 6000MHz kit since this Z690 is going to keep me back from 7000MHz+. My lil' brother games, so i wanted to buy him the highest speed of memory possible. So if this board is going to give me issue from 6400MHz+ then i'll just settle for 6000MHz. I will post results as one of you thought it would be great for data, thanks again.

its plenty enough and pretty sure 7000MT's is a breeze/sneeze without tinkering on options that much, the limitation on z690 is artificially limited to the DDR5 training data that Asus baked into the BIOS, beyond 7200MT's you have to manually compute with the values that correspond to the training algo's for bootup (I saw a member on another forum that has the Z690 Maximus Extreme doing 8000MT's on a 13900K golden bin chip and its freakin stable), I had a random 12900K doing 7400MT's on my Z690E Strix..

For all of you reading this, taking time to learn how to tweak your platform is not in any way of a problem or pain, pretty much gives you something to learn and try on, I hear common people easily complain on "Why do I have the same hardware but I can't get get there, this guy must be some kind of a hoax" kind of a dilemma, its because they don;t take time to appreciate learning on how to tweak, and instead insist on having a mindset of "I paid this much for this stuff so I just expect it to run that way, that's the way its paid to be" , it isn't wrong nor its right either, remember how every silicon differs, and that is just not an excuse, only those who lack or don't want to have the skill who thinks that way, it should be fun trying to squeeze every ounce of performance that you can for that budget. (that feeling alone sends chill to my spine and gives me a boner or 2)

I don't want to sound like a jerk guys, so let me know if my reply sounded like one..

I just recently talked to someone who asked for help on the same dilemma as he saw some of my post (with SS on another forum) having the same exact hardware as his, and I am doing leagues beyond what he was currently, when I walked him through, he just left me with a cold impression that he just lost interest as it was tedious to get there, and he'd rather just use the stock speeds his sticks has. it was really dumb.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I'm not sure it's directly related to ASUS, my ACE was very uncooperative, the kit I have is in fact the highest rated kit on its QVL and that board never ever ran it stable at the supposedly validated settings. It did 7600 with (relatively to frequency) tightened timings effortlessly with the Z790 Apex Encore, in fact, it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out the timings I am using with this motherboard. Which probably can still be improved, I just don't see the benefit in spending the time to do so, after all these figures look fine and the latencies are acceptable as far as I'm concerned.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

I'm not sure it's directly related to ASUS, my ACE was very uncooperative, the kit I have is in fact the highest rated kit on its QVL and that board never ever ran it stable at the supposedly validated settings. It did 7600 with (relatively to frequency) tightened timings effortlessly with the Z790 Apex Encore, in fact, it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out the timings I am using with this motherboard. Which probably can still be improved, I just don't see the benefit in spending the time to do so, after all these figures look fine and the latencies are acceptable as far as I'm concerned.

View attachment 398621

You have an Apex. I'm jealous. But then I see your screenshot. My friend, we should see nothing lower than 8000mt/s frequencies with this setup. Especially since it seems the cpu is just always stock (253w enforced?).

 

[Dr. Dro]

You have an Apex. I'm jealous. But then I see your screenshot. My friend, we should see nothing lower than 8000mt/s frequencies with this setup. Especially since it seems the cpu is just always stock (253w enforced?).

It's an earlier 6800 MT/s Hynix A kit, 8000 should be doable with the motherboard and I guess even my relatively unremarkable 13900KS sample (on a scale from 0 to 10 and 5 as an average,, it gets a 5.5 binning wise, really just slightly ahead of the bell curve when compared to the Igor's Lab SP data article). Maybe even with this kit, giving it enough voltage. But really, not that fussed. I plan on replacing this by, well:

G.SKILL Showcases DDR5-8400 CL44 128GB (2x64GB) High-Speed, Large-Capacity Overclocked Memory - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.

2 May 2025 - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading brand of performance overclock memory and PC components, is showcasing large-capacity overclocked memory at DDR5-8400 128GB 2x64GB on the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E APEX motherboard and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D desktop...

www.gskill.com

Whenever G.Skill ships this and I somehow can get my paws on it, that is.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

It's an earlier 6800 MT/s Hynix A kit, 8000 should be doable with the motherboard and I guess even my relatively unremarkable 13900KS sample (on a scale from 0 to 10 and 5 as an average,, it gets a 5.5 binning wise, really just slightly ahead of the bell curve when compared to the Igor's Lab SP data article). Maybe even with this kit, giving it enough voltage. But really, not that fussed. I plan on replacing this by, well:

G.SKILL Showcases DDR5-8400 CL44 128GB (2x64GB) High-Speed, Large-Capacity Overclocked Memory - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.

2 May 2025 - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading brand of performance overclock memory and PC components, is showcasing large-capacity overclocked memory at DDR5-8400 128GB 2x64GB on the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E APEX motherboard and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D desktop...

www.gskill.com

Whenever G.Skill ships this and I somehow can get my paws on it, that is.

Nice kit.

I have early samsung kits. The 36-36-36 ones. They are actually pretty fast at 6800mt/s. I only battle having a board that doesn't support the speeds you can way more easily obtain.

So I make due. This TUF only supports up to 7200mt/s, and you do have to tweak to get that stable. Pretty much anything I've tried over 6800mt/s will eventually become unstable. Unknown time frame.

I'm near'ish your settings. But that's just whipped up, I don't use it daily. Just wanted to see if I could replicate your Roulette screen shot. So far, no dice
EDIT: This kit is not the Samsung kit. They don't clock particularly well, the kid is using em' Trident Z 6000mhz CL36

 

[ir_cow]

I'm hoping Gskill sends me 128GB UDIMM 8000 MT/s. Fingers crossed.

Not sure it will run on anything but 1851 Socket right now being high frequency Dual-rank.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

I'm hoping Gskill sends me 128GB UDIMM 8000 MT/s. Fingers crossed.

quit bragging

Not sure it will run on anything but 1851 Socket right now being high frequency Dual-rank.

Muck around and find out!

 

[Dr. Dro]

I'm hoping Gskill sends me 128GB UDIMM 8000 MT/s. Fingers crossed.

Not sure it will run on anything but 1851 Socket right now being high frequency Dual-rank.

Hopefully it works well on Raptor and the Apex Encore, too. This board rocks. I'll need a memory upgrade soon, 32 GB RAM isn't cutting it since I upgraded to the 5090. Seems to increase the amount of memory that many games expect your machine to have, and I find it overcommitting memory all the time.

 

[RootinTootinPootin]

It's an earlier 6800 MT/s Hynix A kit, 8000 should be doable with the motherboard and I guess even my relatively unremarkable 13900KS sample (on a scale from 0 to 10 and 5 as an average,, it gets a 5.5 binning wise, really just slightly ahead of the bell curve when compared to the Igor's Lab SP data article). Maybe even with this kit, giving it enough voltage. But really, not that fussed. I plan on replacing this by, well:

G.SKILL Showcases DDR5-8400 CL44 128GB (2x64GB) High-Speed, Large-Capacity Overclocked Memory - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.

2 May 2025 - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading brand of performance overclock memory and PC components, is showcasing large-capacity overclocked memory at DDR5-8400 128GB 2x64GB on the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E APEX motherboard and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D desktop...

www.gskill.com

Whenever G.Skill ships this and I somehow can get my paws on it, that is.

I have an A-Die kit rated for 6400MT's doing 8200MT's on the Apex Encore..

I'm hoping Gskill sends me 128GB UDIMM 8000 MT/s. Fingers crossed.

Not sure it will run on anything but 1851 Socket right now being high frequency Dual-rank.

Already had someone tried that with the Asus Z790 AYW OC (Apex of China) running at 7600MT's..

Getting there really "needs" tinkering on the other options laid out in the motherboard BIOS, I am as well amazed on how a simple setting hidden somewhere has that big of an impact on boot training with Higher frequencies as well as how much voltage you can shave off on the VDDQ for lower memory temps.

 

[InVasMani]

Hopefully it works well on Raptor and the Apex Encore, too. This board rocks. I'll need a memory upgrade soon, 32 GB RAM isn't cutting it since I upgraded to the 5090. Seems to increase the amount of memory that many games expect your machine to have, and I find it overcommitting memory all the time.

I'd say ideally x1.5 VRAM is what you should aim for on system memory though more is welcome since it makes life easier depending on what you run and multitasking plus background tasks especially if you don't pay attention to 90 things running in the background in task tray on startup. I'm sure that's you of course. I think your issue is probably the RTX 5090 is somewhat starving out the leftover memory for OS background tasks since it'll eat into like 24GB on it's own a good amount of the time at least if you use it properly to do what it's meant to instead of playing minesweeper with it.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I'd say ideally x1.5 VRAM is what you should aim for on system memory though more is welcome since it makes life easier depending on what you run and multitasking plus background tasks especially if you don't pay attention to 90 things running in the background in task tray on startup. I'm sure that's you of course. I think your issue is probably the RTX 5090 is somewhat starving out the leftover memory for OS background tasks since it'll eat into like 24GB on it's own a good amount of the time at least if you use it properly to do what it's meant to instead of playing minesweeper with it.

I actually do pay attention and have trimmed the fat on my OS install, I keep as few things running on the background as possible to keep a full OS experience, has always been that way. But I agree, 1.5, preferably 2x VRAM due to how the OS memory manager works. Unfortunately for my system there is no easy/simple fix, I really need a 64 GB+ memory kit that hits high speed, it's gonna be expensive

I have an A-Die kit rated for 6400MT's doing 8200MT's on the Apex Encore..

I don't think it's entirely not doable, but this is a 24/7 setting at an easy to manage voltage, I don't need active cooling or anything. Really, not much of a bother.