Hey everyone! I've recently decided to upgrade my RAM due to rising prices, and I bought some XPG Spectrox D35G 2x16GB DDR4 3600 MHz CL 18 RAM. After looking into it more, I found out that the CL 18 value might be a bit high. Is it possible to lower the CL value to 16 or maybe 17? I'm worried about whether this would affect the lifespan of the RAM. Just as a side note, I'm using a Ryzen 5 5600 processor with a B450M H motherboard. Here are some images of my setup that might help: [link1](https://imgur.com/a/dHUbpQH) [link2](https://imgur.com/a/jrRyacK)
3 Answers
Cycle Latency isn't everything. In fact, secondary timings play a much bigger part in overall performance. Dropping the CL from 18 to 17 is going to give you only a tiny bump. If you're up for a journey, you could try tightening timings, but it can take a lot of trial and error. I've spent over 8 hours tweaking for just a minor boost!
3600 CL18 is perfectly fine for most use cases. Just a heads up, overclocking RAM can be tricky, and stability testing can be a real headache. I wouldn't bother changing it unless you really want to dive into it.
Honestly, you don't need to stress about it too much! Unless you're running benchmarks on two identical systems side by side, you probably won't notice much of a difference.
Quick question though, in the memory section it shows CL 18, but in the SPD section it says CL 19. Which one is the actual value? That’s confusing!