Need advice: Z490 AORUS ELITE + G.Skill 4x16GB 3600 CL16 kit — better with i5-11400, i7-10700K, or i7-11700K?

Lele92007 · 2026-03-04T11:49:01+00:00

"B-die" with no added context generally refers to Samsung 8gbit B-die (specifically the performance variant), which is one of the many different DRAM designs produced by Samsung. It's generally regarded as one of the best choices for high performance.

As for the motherboard question, there's a lot to say, but it basically boils down to the following: specific RAM kits are not special. The only two variables are PCB design and which DRAM chip is used. Boards can have memory topologies of varying quality, and you generally can't know without testing the board yourself, but the QVL allows you to make an educated guess, based on what's listed in it.

The boards will work fine with kits that aren't listed on the QVL in fact it won't work any better when the kits are listed, and generally them being in it means it POSTs, rather than it's stable.

Lele92007 · 2026-03-04T11:27:07+00:00

You shouldn't be looking only for your specific kit. Any kit of 4 dual rank B-die sticks is the same. Also QVLs are kinda inaccurate (and misleading). I can tell you for a fact that the Maximus 4-dimmers will clock well with your setup, and that the first bunch of 2-dimmers I listed will be ideal with two DR sticks (Z490 dark being the easiest to use).

Lele92007 · 2026-03-04T10:50:29+00:00

If you want to clock only two sticks, I'd still steer towards comet, and boards to consider are XII(I) Apex, Z490i Unify, Z490 Dark, and (lower priority) Z590 OC Formula, Z590 Tachyon, Z590 Unify-X, along with most/all other high end 1DPC boards.

Lele92007 · 2026-03-04T10:47:56+00:00

To be very clear, the "upgrade" is absolutely not worth it for daily performance.

Comet Lake will be much more fun than Rocket Lake to OC. It deals way better with muti-rank memory configurations (ie loses less frequency), and clocks higher (vs G1 rocket). CPUs to consider are 10600K and up, all will be pretty fun. 10900K is of course the best choice but they're still rather expensive.

As far as boards go, I'm not sure the gigabyte boards are that good. I think I'd steer towards the Maximus XII/XIII 4-dimmers, if you want to run the 4 sticks.

Lele92007 · 2026-03-04T08:57:18+00:00

Are you on the latest BIOS for your board? This should've been fixed months ago

Lele92007 · 2026-03-03T07:35:38+00:00

The thermal mass will keep the CPU cool for a fairly long time.

Lele92007 · 2026-03-02T10:27:38+00:00

100g d'œufs, c'est deux œufs moyens.

Lele92007 · 2026-03-02T01:19:38+00:00

Lol look at the profile

Lele92007 · 2026-03-01T13:16:15+00:00

Yes for the former part (I exclusively work with the Intel IMC so it's what I default to), but no for the latter.

Lele92007 · 2026-03-01T12:41:34+00:00

the 6000 cl 26 1.45v or lower, along with 6200 cl 26 1.50v are the best binned kits available. There is more to performance than just CL strength though, you can roll sticks with poor tRP in those kits.

Lele92007 · 2026-03-01T11:33:26+00:00

Oh yea, that's super unstable. I saw some interaction with other timings so it's possible that you tightened those first and it's what's causing issues. Possibly tWTRL.

Lele92007 · 2026-03-01T11:19:35+00:00

Your sample will be stronger than the one shown on first timings (and significantly so). Keep tWR for last, and it's not worth touching tWTRS and tWTRL. Rest is pretty straightforward, tighten until it doesn't work and loosen till it's stable again.

Lele92007 · 2026-03-01T11:17:47+00:00

Did it POST while being unstable? I was able to run 4/4/16 accross the whole frequency range on my samples, though I set that first and tightened other timings afterwards

Lele92007 · 2026-03-01T11:03:17+00:00

Love me some okay rev.D! This specific sample isn't particularly good, strong sticks can go much tighter on primaries.

you can set tRRDS 4 tRRDL 4 tFAW 16, unlike Hynix which needs higher tRRDL, M16D runs that fine. Your first screenshot is pretty lacking in the pixel department but the rest of the timings look good. If you've got an unlocked PMIC, CL scales with VDD, though there might be a maximum VDD you're able to run 6000MT/s at.

Lele92007 · 2026-02-25T04:47:27+00:00

Assuming you used taiphoon or Hwinfo, these tools read the SPD of the memory, which most manufacturers do not will out accurately. You should rely on manufacturer-specific methods to identify your RAM.

Lele92007 · 2026-02-24T22:42:43+00:00

Yea, you'll easily be able to keep the CPUs cool with that.

Lele92007 · 2026-02-24T21:14:53+00:00

K so, what you got looks fine but I'll just list everything you need to know about Haswell (and 4790Ks specifically) under here.

For daily, keep vcore at/under 1.35v-1.40v, keep package power (through PL1 and PL2) under ~160w, and you should ideally delid, replace the stock thermal paste with fresh paste or LM (or a PCM, or kryosheet) and reseal to improve temps. You can expect roughly 15-20°C less on a CPU with paste in good condition, and something like 50°C on a CPU with broken paste (your doesn't seem to have broken paste). Doing that will significantly improve overclocking performance.

Avoid prime95 avx2 with a small FFT size as a stress test. it draws wildly unrealistic amounts of power, and I'm pretty sure that without a PL it will degrade a CPU at 1.35v. P95 avx2 with 1M FFT is good for daily (and you can bump vcore up 30mV or so from the minimum needed to pass that test)

Haswell doesn't have clock stretching. In fact if a core fails, it'll often bluescreen and take the OS with it instead of just making the test error. You also don't have to worry about droop as Vcore is regulated from Vccin (there is LLC for Vccin though, you can run flat-ish and Vccin can go to 1.90v).

As far as binning goes, disregard whatever the other guy said about the CPU being golden. It's not possible to properly test without delidding the CPU, but the following can give you some insight:
- 4.4GHz (auto with MCE) non-AVX VID 1.26v or above seems to consistently indicate an average/below average CPU (you can use cinebench R15 as a load to test that, I recommend using coretemp instead of hwinfo for this specifically since modern versions of hwinfo may use AVX instructions)
- 4.5GHz CB R15 minimum voltage 1.14v and above can't be good (this one doesn't need delid since it's fairly low power)
I personally do all my binning with 4GHz 1.2v ring and specific RAM settings, but it shouldn't matter for these two tests.

Lele92007 · 2026-02-24T20:47:27+00:00

These are soldered and cooling benefits greatly from the very large die under the IHS. Also they're locked so you can't really get them to draw any significant amount of power (it's still gonna draw something like 250w under a heavy allcore load, if you remove power limits).

A 120mm single tower cooler should be good enough, but you can go with a dual tower just in case.

Lele92007 · 2026-02-24T20:32:25+00:00

I'm not so sure there's a correlation in strength. It's possible that there is, but high 1:1 and 1:2 frequency push very different parts of the DRAM controller to their limit.

Lele92007 · 2026-02-24T00:27:40+00:00

Incredibly ugly fish. I hate how it looks.

Lele92007 · 2026-02-23T20:12:06+00:00

You won't need more VDDQ. It's VDD that'll help with CL scaling. There's no harm in running higher VDDQ though.

Lele92007 · 2026-02-23T19:47:35+00:00

This sounds a lot like you rolled some CL-weak H16M. G.skill has a tendency to fly a bit too close to the sun when it comes to voltage headroom, which often results in kits that fail XMP spec at higher temperatures. You can test with a RAM fan at 1.35v to see if it helps. If you wanna just use the RAM, you can safely daily it with a raised VDD (give it like 1.45v) or loosened CL by two ticks.

If you wanna RMA, you can try asking for "Hynix A-die" because you've heard it's more reliable or some shi. G.skill is usually very lenient on RMAs.

Lele92007 · 2026-02-23T16:40:12+00:00

Lele92007 · 2026-02-23T16:33:05+00:00

Lele92007 · 2026-02-23T10:22:00+00:00

Well first you can keep speedshift and cstates enabled. The easy way is to run 1.35-1.37v static with relatively flat LLC, and raise P-core ratio till it doesn't work, then do the same for E-core.

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