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Packaging and
Installation
The memory comes
in the standard plastic bubble packaging. Nothing
fancy, but it serves its purpose.
The Patriot PC3-12800 features silver aluminum heat
spreaders. DDR3 uses less voltage than DDR2, but it
still puts off heat. The aluminum heat spreaders
should help dissipate that heat.
Testing and
Overclocking
Before I could start testing DDR3, I had to get a new
motherboard. I chose the Asus P5K3 Deluxe which has an
Intel P35 chipset. This is going to mean that
adjusting the memory speed is going to require adjusting the
FSB. A variety of FSB speeds will be used ranging from
400MHz to 500MHz. Here is a basic rundown of the test system:
| Hardware |
Model |
| Motherboard: |
Asus P5K3 Deluxe Wi-Fi Edition |
| CPU |
Intel
C2D E6600 |
| Video Card |
eVGA 8800GTS 320 |
| Storage |
Seagate 400GB SATA |
| Optical |
Lite-On 16X DVD+/-RW with
Lightscribe |
| Memory |
Patriot PC3-12800LLK |
| Cooling |
Corsair Nautilus 500 Water cooling
kit |
According to Patriot's website, it's safe to run the memory at
1.8v. For overclocking, I used 1.90v. This
probably voided the warranty, but it's not too high to be
unsafe. Just remember that all memory is different and
yours could fry if you increase the voltage. Before we
get to the results, let's talk about the default speed of
1600MHz. The P35 chipset is not like the 680i where
you can just type in the memory speed you want. Before
I even saw 1600MHz as a memory option, I had to have the FSB
set to 400Mhz. You need to consider this, if you have
a CPU that won't run at 400MHz. All I can say is Intel
needs to adopt some of the memory settings that the 680i has
in BIOS.
Results
Patriots DDR3 is already overclocked pretty high, but it still
has some headroom. We were able to increase the speed
from 800MHz (1600DDR) to 850MHz (1700DDR). This
doesn't sound like much. But with the high speed that
this memory is already running at, any increase is
impressive.
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