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As mentioned before these are some of the best ram heatsinks (some call them heatspreaders) I’ve seen come pre-installed on ram, the copper layer spreads the heat out, and the aluminum gets rid of it. Solid copper would be better, but also much more expensive. As a bonus the heatsinks are nice and short, you shouldn’t have any issues clearing your CPU fan with this kit.
Installation
Installing ram used to be a pretty decent trick back in the 30pin and 72pin SIMM days. Even DDR2 was tricky as the notch that denotes which way the stick goes in wasn’t very far off center.
This however is nice modern DDR3 ram, the notch that denotes which way the stick goes in is easy to see, and the process is quite simple!
- Remove your old ram, leaving the latches open.
- Line the notch in the stick of ram up with the ridge in the slot.
- Gently insert the ram and double-check that you have it in the proper way.
- Apply firm pressure until the ram clicks in. It should close the latches automatically.
- You’re done! Now you need to go into your bios and do the software part.
As you can see the ram sits lower then the heatsink, so you won’t have any interference problems.
Test Setup and Procedure
| Processor | Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.2Ghz (LGA 1366) |
| Motherboard | Asus Rampage II Extreme |
| Ram | Patriot Viper Xtreme 1600-8-9-8 PX736G1600LLK |
| Graphics Card | MSI Radeon 4670 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital Blue 500gb SATA-II |
| Optical Drive | LG x24 DVD-RW Re-writer SATA |
| CPU Cooler | Xigmatek HDT1283 |
| Power Supply | Raidmax 530w |
| Chassis | Coolermaster Elite |
| Network | Asus Rampage II Extreme – Creative X-Fi |
| Monitor | 22″ HP 1680×1050 widescreen and Acer 1280×1024 LCDs |
| OS | Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit |
To test the memory modules, we used a test rig based on the above components. As you can see, it’s a decently spec’d system, enough for what we need. Here are the various benchmarks we’ll be using to test this ram:
- Sandra Pro Business 2010
- CPU-Z and Everest
- ScienceMark 2
- Maxxmem
<hrdata-mce-alt=”CPU-Z and Everest” class=”system-pagebreak” title=”CPU-Z and Everest” />
First we’re going through everything at total stock clock speeds.
CPU-Z
This is actually quite good for leaving everything on AUTO. Most ram will default to 8-8-8 or 9-9-9 timings. Also note that the command rate is “1T”. More on that later.
Everest
