OCZ Technology recently released their DDR2 PC2-9200 Flex II series kit that consists of two 2GB modules. OCZ rates these particular modules at DDR2-1150 with timings of 5-5-5-18 at 2.10V on higher end P35 and X38/X48 motherboards. Besides the impressive speed ratings, these modules feature a revised thermal management system that consists of a new heatspreader with dedicated cooling channels directly over the ICs along with two 1/4” ID barbs for attaching a liquid cooling setup. The kit contains 3/8” and 1/2” barb adapters, four-way manifold barb, and 40” of plastic tubing for those who want to cool the memory a different way.
The cooling channels and manifold are made from aluminum so a user with copper devices in their water cooling system will need to use an inhibitor to ensure the differing metals stay at détente during operation. Due to the size of the heatspreaders, the modules cannot be placed side-by-side, thus limiting memory capacity to 4GB on most boards.
In practice, we found utilizing air-cooling was just as effective for reaching our maximum clock speeds as using chilled water, even though temperatures were up to 6C lower when chilled. The primary reason for this is the maximum voltage guaranteed by OCZ is 2.15V. The ICs are from PSC and OCZ highly bins these particular chips to ensure DDR2-1150 capability on supported boards. As such, any voltages over 2.10V in testing did not result in any additional speed increase or timing decrease. In fact, our maximum voltage utilized at DDR2-1200 was 2.08V on the ASUS P5Q Deluxe board.
We are going to cut to the chase with today’s sneak peak and will only be presenting our maximum stable clock results with the PC2-9200 Flex II 4GB kit on the P5Q Deluxe board sporting the new P45 chipset. During testing for our 14 module, 11 different suppliers 2x2GB DDR2 roundup, we had a couple of kits that stood out from the rest; this kit was one of them from a clocking standpoint.
We also had success with running this kit at low voltages up to DDR2-900 (1.7V at 5-4-4-10), but will save those results and others for the roundup. Today’s preview will just answer the maximum clock question and ensure that OCZ’s DDR2-1150 claims are indeed true. Our system setup consists obviously of the Flex II kit, Intel E8500, ASUS P5Q Deluxe, WD 640GB HD, a couple of optical drives from Sony, and our lab favorite Zotac 9800GTX AMP! Video card. Cooling our E8500 at 4.3GHz on a 24/7 basis was not going to occur with the retail heatsink, so we employed the CoolIT Systems Pure CPU cooler, which surprised us by keeping our CPU significantly cooler and quieter than our standard heatsink.
Let’s take a quick look at our maximum clock results today.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
12 Comments
View All Comments
Konadreamer - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - link
I'm currently running my Mushkin 2x1gb ddr2 800 sticks @ 5-5-5-15, 1.95v, and 1200Mhz without a hiccup. Stock voltage is 1.8v. I realize 2x2gb sticks require more vDimm to run @ posted speeds, but if all you are doing is going to 4gb total, then why not go with 4 x 1gb if they can be overclocked with better results? Oh, and btw, my e4400, 3.2 Ghz (8 x 400) posts a 7600 bandwidth in Sandra XI. Suweeet!Lennie - Saturday, May 24, 2008 - link
How come Memset and Everest say DDR3 RAM ??!!!Pez D Spencer - Saturday, May 24, 2008 - link
Them heatspreaders is ree-dic-a-luss. I'm not a PC guru by any means, but I've used expensive RAM with tight timings and cheap RAM with loose timings. Truthfully I never saw much (if any) difference in performance. I mean, sure you might see a few points in Everest, Sandra, or 3DMark, but WHO CARES. I sure don't.TGressus - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
This kit seems like a good candidate for a 400MHz FSB, 5:4 DDR-1000, tRD5, tCL4 X48 board at nominal vDDR. Do you have any data for these modules at CAS4 DDR-1000?n7 - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
You can't do tCL 4 @ DDR2-1000 on PSC 2 GB dimms.Absolutely not going to happen.
This isn't Micron where adding lots of vdimm helps either; extra voltage provides very minimal gains with PowerChips.
You'll get around DDR2-900 CAS 4 at most i'd bet, though it's usually less for most kits.
Generally speaking, scaling for 2x2 GB PSC-based kits goes like this:
4-4-3
5-4-3
5-5-3
5-5-4
5-5-5
Denithor - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
In the hot deals forum there's a DDR3-1333 kit available for $185. Leave it to OCZ to squeeze every last drop of performance out of DDR2 about the time everyone else starts focusing on the next big thing.JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
But can that DDR3-1333 result come anywhere near the OCZ DDR2 timings? (Then again, it can probably clock higher than 1333... not that memory bandwidth really matters that much beyond a certain point.)Loquejr - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
Looks like a lot of effort for not much gain to me, nice write up tho as always =¬]Nickel020 - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - link
Waht are the 3 different 3 results in Crysis for each game setting/RAM configuration for? Min/Avg/Max?n7 - Monday, May 19, 2008 - link
Seems OCZ has gotten some very high binned PowerChips.Too bad this kit has stupidly wide heatspreaders that make 8 GB impossible...
I'm not sure if this is possible, but i'd love to see the ICs for all the kits tested in the upcoming 2x2 GB roundup.
I know basically all are PSC, but i'm curious to see how the different PSC ICs do.
There's X (Xxxxxx-AA3G), R (Rxxxxx-AA3G), & T (Txxxxx-LA3G) from what i've seen...do you know how what the default speed bins are for them by any chance?
Anyway, looking forward to the full roundup.