ASRock announced this week that renown overclocker Nick Shih has filled ASRock’s X299 Taichi CLX workstation-grade motherboard with 1TB of memory when the motherboard only officially supports up to 256GB.
To achieve this feat, Shih paired an Intel Core i9-7900X with eight SK Hynix 128GB LRDIMM (load-reduced DIMM) modules. This is quite fascinating, considering we were told that the X299 chipset doesn’t support EEC (error-correcting code) memory, much less LRDIMMs. It’s unknown what kind of magic Shih had to use to get the aforementioned memory to work on the ASRock X299 Taichi CLX.
SK Hynix already has a couple of 256GB LRDIMMs in its portfolio, but they max out at 2,666 MHz. The ones that Shih used seem to be unreleased. According to the screenshots shared, the LRDIMMs carry the HMABAGL7MBR4N-WM part number and come clocked at 2,933 MHz with CL21-21-21-47 timings and a 1.20V operating voltage.
What makes Shih’s accomplishment even more spectacular is that fact he was able to push the LRDIMMs to 3,471.8 MHz with the memory timings configured to CL20-24-24-56. That Core i9-7900X must have one heck of an IMC (integrated memory controller) to support up 1TB of memory operating at those speeds.
Samsung revealed its 256GB LRDIMMs last year. It would certainly be mind-blowing to see 2TB of memory running on a consumer-grade motherboard. The tools are there ready for anyone to use. Now, we just need a daring overclocker to attempt it.