A fresh DDR5 overclocking milestone has just been posted, and it’s the kind of result that turns heads even in a scene where records seem to fall every other week. Well-known overclocker Saltycroissant has pushed DDR5 memory to an eye-watering 12,917 MT/s using nothing more than ambient cooling, proving that you don’t always need extreme sub-zero methods to reach elite-tier speeds.
The run was achieved on GIGABYTE’s newer Z890 AORUS Tachyon Duo X ICE, a recently released evolution of the original Tachyon boards that are widely used in competitive memory overclocking. While this attempt didn’t take the overall number-one spot, it stands out because doing nearly 13,000 MT/s on air is exceptionally rare in a field where many top leaderboard scores are produced with liquid nitrogen cooling.
Saltycroissant paired the board with Corsair Vengeance 24GB DDR5 and reached 6458.7 MHz, which translates to 12,917 MT/s effective. That’s far beyond the motherboard’s official advertised memory support, which is listed at up to 10,400 MT/s. Even more impressive, the memory timings reportedly didn’t take the kind of heavy hit you might expect at these sky-high frequencies.
A big reason this platform is generating buzz is its focus on CQDIMM memory modules. CQDIMM designs include a clock driver directly on the RAM module, improving signal integrity and helping memory scale to higher speeds. Combined with the Z890 AORUS Tachyon Duo X ICE design, this approach appears to give the Duo X model a noticeable advantage in memory overclocking compared to earlier Tachyon ICE iterations, despite using an 8-layer PCB.
And while the ambient-cooled 12,917 MT/s run is the headline-grabber, Saltycroissant also tested the setup under LN2 later and reportedly hit 13,407.8 MT/s on the same motherboard. That result is competitive enough to land near the very top of the HWBot rankings, sitting in third place at the time of reporting.
At the top end of DDR5 overclocking, every extra bit of frequency is hard-won, and the current ultra-high watermark sits in the mid-13,000 MT/s range. Still, what makes this achievement particularly noteworthy is how close it gets to the best scores in the world while relying on everyday cooling instead of extreme methods. For PC hardware enthusiasts and competitive overclockers alike, it’s a strong sign that the Z890 AORUS Tachyon Duo X ICE and CQDIMM-focused tuning may be reshaping what’s possible with DDR5—whether you’re chasing records on purpose-built test benches or simply watching the limits of modern memory get pushed higher.
