Asus adds new DDR5 overclocking option to Z790 ROG motherboards for hunting down more fps and better stability

pcgamer.com:

With just about every motherboard model on the market supporting RAM overclocking, it takes something new to stand out from the crowd now. Enter stage left Asus with its DIMM Flex feature in its latest Z790 ROG lineup, that is supposed to allow for more performance or stability, depending on how hot everything is running.

The full details on exactly how it all works were issued as a blog on Asus' website and it involves the addition of extra circuits and components that monitor the temperature of the DDR5 modules, feeding the information back to the CPU. If the RAM or power management chips are running too hot, then the board will tell the processor to slow things down a touch.

But if they're both under a set thermal limit, then the CPU will adjust its integrated memory controller, boosting clock speeds or dropping timings, to eke out a little more performance. At stock settings, DDR5 isn't going to run hot enough to cause problems, but those with a high XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) can hit a bit of a thermal wall. This leads to the whole PC becoming unstable and the only way to avoid this is by using plenty of fans or by reducing the RAM speeds.

DIMM Flex essentially does the latter for you by using a sensor on the motherboard, near the DIMM slots. The signal it sends out is fed into a discrete controller, which in turn sends info back to the CPU, telling it to change the memory settings accordingly. The blog post doesn't offer much detail on how rapidly this all works but Asus did show the results of it all in two benchmarks, Metro Exodus and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Compared to the default RAM settings, using DIMM Flex gave a 17.6% boost to the average frame rate in Metro Exodus, running at 1440p with the