G.SKILL Trident X F32666C11D 8GB KIT
RRP: $149.99 | Website: www.gskill.com
Test Machine
ASRock Z77 OC-Formula (1.60)
Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB
CoolerMaster Silent Pro M2
1500W
Windows 7 64-bit SP1 /XP SP3
G
oing into this review we
had very high hopes for
the memory. After all
it had been previously shown
to reach speeds in excess of
3,300MHz when cooled with
LN2. Upon closer inspection
and inquiry though, it turns
out that the set used for
this extreme overclocking
feat was the CL10 set of the
same frequency. As you can
imagine, such a kit is specially
binned and not as easy to
14 The OverClocker Issue 22 | 2012
purchase as this one.
We thought to see just how
different these kits could
be from each other and how
telling the price difference
between the two was.If you
glance over at the results
you’ll notice that the default
XMP profile performance
isn’t impressive at all. This
however we suspect could be
because of a board anomaly
pertaining to this memory
in particular. We improved
performance by tuning down
the memory performance
level to “6” at which point the
RAM performed as expected.
It may be of concern to those
using other motherboards
which many not necessarily
have this option available to
them. In such a case you’re
likely stuck with that kind
of performance which is
anything but stellar.
As we scaled the frequency
we noticed the issue repeat
itself and even though we
were always able to remedy
it, it’s important that you
are aware of this so as
to not create unrealistic
expectations from the RAM.
Since this was high speed
RAM we started from
2400MHz right up to 2800MHz
which was stable at a little
over the default voltage. Of
peculiar behaviour from this
RAM was the inability to scale
with voltage, in fact at 1.7V
the RAM showed numerous
errors and the best setting
to use was between 1.65
and 1.68V.With such a low
voltage the included fan was
unnecessary and given that
this is a value alternative,
maybe should not have been
included at all.
In contrast to the C10 kit, we
would probably lean towards
that set even though $30
may seem like a lot of money
especially when considering