DDR3 vs DDR3L (1.5V vs ~1.3V) RAM

Hello all,
Despite being a long term member, it's been a while since I've last tweaked with my hardware (Haven't had anything newer than lga1366), and hence I consider myself a newbie and am posting here.

At the moment I have a Asus gene III, and I'm suspecting my memory may be playing up. I'm looking around for DDR3 RAM but notice most of them are of lower voltage e.g. < 1.5V which is what my current RAM is using.

I can see they've now been superceded by the lower voltage ram types. I'm wondering if these are backwards compatible and I'll force the motherboard to lower it's voltage for the memory.

Would anyone be able to confirm?
Cheers
Loup

 

Regular DDR3 aren't superceded by DDR3L but offered as an alternative and required by certain 4th gen Intel processors (mostly notebook processors) due to voltage and power consumption. DDR3L has dual voltage output at 1.5v and 1.35v where regular DDR3 is 1.5 or 1.65v (sometimes 1.6v as well).

DDR3 1.5 and 1.65v kits are still the norm for enthusiast/performance ram modules, (RipJaws, Hyper-X, XMS3, Dominator, Red/Pro Line etc etc).

 

DDR3L will work fine at 1.5v.