|
Packaging and
Installation
The memory arrived
from OCZ just like you would see it in the stores. It
came in the standard clear bubble package, proudly
displaying the 1/4" barbs for water-cooling.
The heat is taken from the memory chips via the
copper/aluminum heatsink. As the heat rises, the
heatsink is cooled through the fins and/or water chamber.
It's not necessary to water cool the memory, because of the
large fins, but it should help reduce the heat. We'll
find out during our testing.
The fin design on
the Flex XLC looks very similar to the Corsair dominator
series. There really are few options when it comes to
fin design because of the limited space you are working
with.
Lack of space
leads to another area of concern, 1/4" barbs. There
really is nothing OCZ could do about this, but most people
are running 3/8" to 1/2" water lines and to reduce it down
to 1/4" is going to really cut down on the water flow.
OCZ could have put larger barbs on their memory, but you
would loose the ability to run four sticks because of the
room that would be needed. So really your options are
to create an independent loop just for the memory or use
step-downs. I have one 3/8" loop for the CPU and I
split that line and reduced it to 1/4" for the memory.
The flow stayed pretty good and I was happy with the way it
worked out.
Testing and
Overclocking
For this review we'll be using an eVGA nForce 680i motherboard
which is based on nvidia's 680i chipset. The CPU will be ran
at a variety of bus speeds during testing and will be listed
on the chart. Here is a basic rundown of the test system:
| Hardware |
Model |
| Motherboard: |
eVGA nforce 680i SLI |
| CPU |
Intel
C2D E6600 |
| Video Card |
eVGA 8800GTS 320 |
| Storage |
Seagate 400GB SATA |
| Optical |
Lite-On 16X DVD+/-RW with
Lightscribe |
| Memory |
OCZ Flex XLC PC2-9200 |
| Cooling |
Corsair Nautilus 500 Water cooling
kit |
According to OCZ's website, it's safe to run the memory at
2.3v. For overclocking, I used 2.35v. This is the
maximum safe voltage to run and not void the warranty. You
can overclock this memory a couple of ways, manually or using
the EPP settings.
EPP and
SLI-Ready Memory Explained
The EPP feature only works with "SLI-Ready" memory. The
SLI-Ready Memory setting in the bios is, in my opinion, for
the inexperienced, and/or to quickly setup the memory bus
speed settings. It identifies the memory and correctly sets
the memory bus speed. It does not change anything else,
including memory timings. Not to knock the EPP feature, but
EPP is not a magical setting that will automatically overclock
memory or lower memory timings below factory recommendations.
SLI-Ready memory will work with just about any non EPP
motherboard and you do not need SLI-Ready memory to run in a
SLI motherboard. EPP and SLI-Ready memory is only an
enhancement feature. I decided to set the BIOS to expert
and manually configure the memory.
Results
While I didn't expect the memory to overclock very much, I was
able to get a little more out of it. I was able to push
the memory to 1250MHz. I was impressed with the memory's
ability to overclock, while keeping the memory at its default
timings of 5-5-5-18. This provided a nice little boost
in performance.
 |
 |
|
