Value Award
G.SKILL TRIDENT F3-2400C10D
RRP: $99 | Website: www.gskill.com
Test Machine
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Intel Core i7 3770K
ASUS Maximus V Gene
GIGABYTE GTX680 OC
SEAGATE 7200.12 500GB
ANTEC HCP 1200
Windows 7 64-bit SPI
M
uch like the other reviews
in this issue, we’ll spare
you the long introduction and
get right into the meat. This is
a budget set of RAM. In fact it’s
the slowest in the entire Z77
Trident range from G.SKILL,
so if you’re expecting 3GHz+
speeds here you’re in for a
disappointment as it’s unlikely
to happen. For that you’ll have
to look to the 2666 and possibly
the 2800MHz set. Those are
hand binned and their pricing
shows it with the identical
2666MHz set retailing for
exactly twice the price.
Given that we are talking
$100 though it may be worth
investing in the 2,666MHz kit,
especially with the incredible
26 The OverClocker Issue 19 | 2012
memory overclocking
headroom the Z77 platform
alongside 3rd generation Core
i7 CPUs provide.
If you’ve glanced over at the
results stable you’ll see that
the default timings on our
chosen system leave a lot to
be desired. Compared with our
reference Transcend aXeRAM
set, the TRIDENT kit is in no
way appealing. However it is
worth keeping in mind that
our reference kit is for an
older platform and it’s half the
capacity. As such, one should
not look at the TRIDENT results
too harshly especially because
this set is cheaper than the
aXeRAM kit when it was
available.
The magic of this Trident kit
is in how far it will go if you
loosen the timings a little. Sure
enough you’ll not be able to
hold on to the default 10-1212-31 much past the default
speed, but you can more than
compensate for that with the
2600 and 2,666MHz settings.
As this is TheOverclocker, we
went straight into the 2700 MHz
setting and that’s where we
found our sweet spot. Granted
memory speed has a lot to
do with the particular CPU
you have at your disposal, we
have yet to find a single IvyBridge CPU that has an IMC
that isn’t capable of 2700MHz.
this particular CPU reached
its limits on air cooling at
2786MHz (achieved with bclk
adjustments). That we were
able to achieve this speed is
nothing short of impressive
especially given the price of
the RAM. For the overclockers
out there, it still may be worth
getting the native 2,666MHz
set as stated before but for the
gamers and price conscious,
this is the better deal as you
can use that $100 you save on
something else.
You may be wondering then,
why not a perfect score for
the kit? Well that’s not purely