GEIL CORSA
EVO 8GB DDR3 2133MHZ KIT
RRP: $109 | Website: http://www.geil.com.tw/products/show/id/315
Test Machine
• Intel Core i7 2600K
• ASUS P6P67 Deluxe
• Asus ENGTX480
• WD 1TB Green
• Windows 7 64-bit
• Corsair AX 1200 PSU
T
he GEIL 8GB 2133 Evo
Corsa CL 9 kit is rated
at 2133Cl9-11-9-28, which
is Easy to configure on the
Sandy Bridge platform. On
other platforms, it can be
a lot trickier as a lot more
variables come into play.
Northbridge and Uncore
speeds just to name a few.
Sandy Bridge has been
labelled by many as far too
easy to overclock as you can
usually reach max speeds
in less than 15 minutes. Not
much tweaking or tuning
via voltages, Plls and such
is required. A good stable
overclocking board, a cherry
CPU and you are in for a
treat. A very fast treat
20 The OverClocker Issue 17 | 2011
Analysis
Intel may call the LGA 1155
platform mainstream but
SandyBridge can easily
knock the socks of many
X58 gaming setups . X58
was impressive regarding
memory bandwith courtesy
of the triple channel IMC,
but SandyBridge can
do even better with just
dual channel as you can
see from the results. The
heatspreader may not be
a real eye-catcher but the
design is “futuristic” and the
colour scheme is even more
so. Honestly, it’s either you
love it or hate it as there is
unlikely to be an in-between.
Nevertheless, we don’t care
about what it looks like. We
want to know what makes
these DIMMs tick. For
those that are interested,
This RAM uses Hynix
DWKBG284C1 ICs.
Most of you are aware
that Sandy Bridge scales
with memory frequency
over timings, but to get a
better picture the RAM was
examined at the lower ram
dividers, 1600 and 1866Mhz.
Timings were tightened
until they produced errors
in the Memtest suite. A very
stressful test indeed, as we
could complete an eightthread Hyperpi 32M run, yet,
Memtest would crash within
minutes. At 1600MHz, we
reached a rock stable 7-87-21 at the default voltage.
We increased the Vdimm
to 1.78V and found CL6-8-7
was possible, but only for
benchmark runs, not bad for
a 4GB DIMM.
At 1866 reached a
respectable 8-9-8-24 at
1.67V, a promising result
for sure. Having said that
most of us would not run
our memory below spec so
we slowly raised the Bclk