Gigabyte Z270X Gaming SOC - 2 vs. 4 dimm

I’ve been testing 2 vs 4 dimm on the Z170/Z270 for some time now and would like to share my experience so far in Geekbench 3. The Gigabyte Z270X Gaming SOC has been the easiest motherboard in my case to push 4 dimm and also the board used here. The testing shown below was done using a i7 7700k processor from Siliconlottery.com and a i3 7350k.

Here are two pictures showing 2 vs 4 dimm with everything in the bios at stock:

2dimm:

4dimm:

The bios layout of the Gigabyte Z270 gaming SOC is very straight forward. An excellent guide has been published for LN2 usage GIGABYTE Z270 Extreme Overclocking Guide - Overclocking.Guide which I will refer to in my LN2 experience section in this thread (coming soon).

-Here are some very useful tools posted by Dino Gigabyte Z270 TOOLS

-when pushing memory OC It is possible that the motherboard will fail memory training on the first boot but eventually train after a few failed attempts. If this is the case be sure to check memory tweak in the operating system and verify that RTL/IOL are not loose such as 58/60/13/14 and that your memory frequency has not dropped multipliers.

-it seems that setting memory boot mode to disable fast boot helps to avoid the above training issues.

-when getting the cpu below -20C it helped me avoid these issues altogether and push memory OC from 3866 to above 4000 MHz cl12-12-12-28 2T using 4 dimm.

-I prefer to set memory timing mode to manual as it allows you to change the timings of Channel A but channel B will automatically be changed as well.

-setting the cpu to 5ghz and cache to 5ghz was easy and is shown below. When leaving cache clocks to 4.5ghz, the core clocks of 5ghz only needed about 1.25 vcore but to stabilize cache clocks to 5ghz I needed to increase vcore to around 1.55v for my processor on water.

-Leaving most voltages and timings to auto worked really well when pushing 4 dimm memory OC.

-Anything above 3333MHz I had difficulty pushing 1T for 4 dimm but 2 dimm could boot 1T 3866 pretty easily. At ambient temperatures of around 20C I could sometimes boot 4000MHz but often the RTL/IOL and 3rd timings were loosen but this was solved when getting the cpu below -20C.

4dimm at 3866MHz CL12-12-12-28 2T timings in bios

Dram training voltage was very useful when pushing 4 dimm above 3600MHz with tight timings.

Here is a comparison of 2 vs 4 dimm at 3866MHz which both were easy to boot on water at +20C.

2dimm 3866MHZ CL12-12-12-28 1T

 

4 dimm at 3866MHz CL12-12-12-28 2T

Bios settings for 5/5ghz and memory 4dimm at 4000MHz cl12-12-12-28 2T

Pushing 4000MHz up to 4080MHz with 102 BLCK (Crashed before taking screenshot with cpu on +20C water).

Tested 4 dimm at 4000MHz cl12-12-12-28 2T on a i3 7350k using venom cpu pot/KPC inferno.

Going below to -20C on the cpu helped tightening RTL/IOL and I was able to push 102 BCLK for 4080 MHz.

XTU using 4 dimm at 4000MHz cl12-12-12-28 2T was also no problem on the i3 7350k.

 

There is a lot of potential for 4dimm OC in benchmarking efficiency vs 2 dimm. I tried 6 different 4 dimm motherboards since the release of Z170/Z270 and the gigabyte Z270 gaming SOC was the easiest to achieve high memory clocks with tight timings in my case.

In the next few weeks I will update this thread with 4 dimm memory OC but this time with the i7 7700k and i3 7350k on LN2 for full out scores at full pot.

A HUGE thanks to gigabyte (especially Sofos for all your help), siliconlottery.com and Kingpin cooling!

I hope others share their experience with this motherboard and 2 vs 4 dimm in this thread.

Nice read, thanks for doing this write up Marc.

Looking forward to further testing, also 4000 or 5000 XTU and 32M comparisons between 2 and 4 DIMM would be great!

Any ideas on z170 SOC-Force? It seems bios limited with additional voltages to 1.5v, which in turn really limits overclock in comparison to other boards. Known chip falls 400mhz+ short and sees a CB.

Is there a XOC bios for z170 and Kaby?

I really need XOC bios for Z170........ beta bios is disaster

Anyone still have BIOS x5r for Z270x SOC??  I found x8r but it doesn't seem to be working for me and wanted to try an older XOC bios.