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Packaging and
Installation
The memory comes
in a plastic bubble packaging. This packaging is
slightly wider than the standard size, due to the Viper
Fins. Nothing
fancy, but it serves its purpose.
The Patriot PC3-15000 features silver Viper Fin ACC (aluminum
copper composite) heat spreaders. DDR3 uses less
voltage than DDR2, but it still puts off heat. The
Viper Fin heat spreaders
should help dissipate that heat.
The ACC Viper Fins are a lot lighter than
other finned memory that I've played with. This memory is designed
to operate at 1.9v and that's a little higher than the run of the mill
DDR3. Typical DDR3 operates at 1.5v, but to get the most out of
these Micron chips patriot has bumped the voltage up a bit.
Testing and
Overclocking
I chose to use the Asus Striker II Extreme
motherboard which has the new nvidia 790i chipset. The
790i has independent FSB and Memory settings. Here is a basic rundown of the test system:
| Hardware |
Model |
| Motherboard: |
Asus Striker II Extreme 790i |
| CPU |
Intel
C2D E6600 |
| Video Card |
XFX 8800GTS 512 |
| Storage |
2 x Seagate 500GB SATA
Raid |
| Optical |
Lite-On 16X DVD+/-RW with
Lightscribe |
| Memory |
Patriot PC3-15000LLK |
| Cooling |
Corsair Nautilus 500 Water cooling
kit |
According to Patriot's website, it's safe to run the memory at
1.9v. For overclocking, I used 1.96v. 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.
Results
Patriots DDR3 is already overclocked very high. I was able to increase the speed
from 933MHz (1866DDR) to 987MHz (1975DDR). This
doesn't sound like much. But with the high speed that
this memory is already running at, any increase is
impressive. What wasn't impressive was the benchmarks
at 1975. Using the exact same timings as the default
1866, I was not able to increase any scores on any of the
benchmarks. They looked pretty much identical, so I did
not include them in any of the graphs. For the graphs
I used the default CPU setting of 1066FSB with the memory
clocked at 1866. I also tested the memory in sync mode
with the CPU/memory at 1866/1866.
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