TheOverclocker Issue 34 | Page 32

"It is most peculiar that the LEDs on the fans are not a matching orange, so as to complete the look and create uniformity with the motherboard. You will most certainly want to use the coolers however as the memory does get particularly warm. Thanks in part to the narrow spacing between DIMM sockets on the intended SOC-Champion motherboard. " hand), often taking anything from hours to days to find the right combination and order. With this CORSAIR set, the 3333MHz results needed a different order than the timings used for 3,400MHz. Attempting to run 3333MHz at 15-15-16-36-1T would fail if the memory was kept in the exact same order that was necessary to achieve 3,477MHz at 16-15-16-36-1T. The opposite of that being true as well. Thus, it was imperative in this the testing of this memory to exhaust all possible combinations of the DIMMs and it is in all this testing that you see the results in the charts. Throughout different BIOS versions and even on other boards that were able to operate this memory at the given 3,400MHz frequency. 32 The OverClocker Issue 34 | 2015 The order in which the DIMMS had to be installed was consistent. Which suggests that the IMC responds best to a particular order of DIMMs and it is not related in any way to the motherboard or firmware version. With that said, we come to the results where you’ll note that there aren't any 3,400MHz numbers. An odd set of results to omit, but consider that you’re purchasing a $999 set of memory. One is unlikely going to operate the memory at the default frequency. More importantly, the given 3,400MHz clock means that your particular CPU and Uncore overclock may be disturbed. Since all memory tests are performed with a CPU clock of 4000MHz and an Uncore clock of 4000MHz, it would be impossible to keep those settings consistent without introducing CPU clock variations thus rendering the results less than reliable, or at the very least not an indication of how performance scales with frequency. With the memory clock at 3,478MHz right down to 3,200MHz, a 4GHz CPU and Uncore clocks were kept, but at 3,500MHz that had to change to 4,020MHz (23x105MHz). If you’re asking yourself why not use the next memory divider (21.33 with 1.66x strap) the reason is the system simply couldn’t do 3,555MHz regardless of the voltage. In single channel mode, of course higher frequencies are possible, but for most users outside of the elite or professional overclockers there’s little to