What exactly does “(OC)” mean in products description

memoryoverclocking

Note: this is not a shopping recommendation request

I want to buy a nice and fast RAM and a motherboard that supports it.

Lets say that I would want to take this RAM (2400MHz), and put it into this board. The board's specification says:

Support for DDR3 2800(OC)/1600/1333/1066 MHz memory modules

How should I read this? Can I just plug in that RAM without worries or will something have to be overclocked to unlock the full speed of the RAM? Which would be no issue I guess, I'm just confused about the cryptic semantics.

Best Answer

What is meant by "OC" (Overclocked) varies depending on what exactly the vendor means. Yes it is ambiguous, and the only way to know for sure is to contact the manufacturer or vendor and obtain clarification. There is no "standard" way for it to mean one specific thing all of the time.

It could mean:

  • This chip has been tested to support (under certain assumed environmental conditions) an overclock up to this value, but the default clock speed is the stock speed.
    OR
  • This chip will operate at this overclocked frequency out of the box with no user intervention, because we have tested this speed, determined it is safe, and enabled it in the firmware by default. OR
  • This speed is something we came up with out of thin air as what might be attainable as an overclock speed under certain circumstances, e.g. extreme cooling solutions.
    OR
  • This product has been modified specifically by our manufacturer or vendor to contain special thermal characteristics that are not part of the stock OEM model, which allows the product to safely operate (based on our testing, or not) at this rated speed.

It could really mean anything, but syntactically, "OC" expands to "Overclock" or "Overclocked".

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