Tech Reaction

Introduction

Recently the good folks at OCZ sent us a set of budget ram to review.

Now I know most of you hardcore overclocker’s are saying “pfft…” however, with budget RAM sometimes and often many times there can be found diamond’s in the rough.

With that said, let’s see what you get.

As we can see, the packaging is simple as to be expected with a budget set of memory.

The platform we chose to test these sticks today consists of the following.

Test Setup

GIGABYTE P55-UD4P

GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5870 SOC

Intel Core i7 860 (ES)

PC power and cooling 1200w Turbocool

Megahalems 1156 cpu cooler w/Scythe 2000 rpm fan

OCZ DDR3 PC3-10666 Platinum (7-7-7-20)

Windows 7 32 bit Operating System

The system

Testing Methodology

Due to the nature of these modules, I find that running Super Pi 32m on sticks that are targeted for budget users is sort of pointless and only belongs in a “high end kit” review as 32m does not necessarily denote 24/7 stability, and more so raw overclockability. That said, I chose prime 95 blend as the stability/stress test.

I would like to note at this point that I did seem to have a problem with overclocking the sticks when using the 1333 divider. This is an interesting issue that I have seen before on a completely different platform. They were able to achieve stability at there default clock speeds, however, for overclockinging purposes we stepped down to the 1066 divider and chose to raise the base clock. With that info disclosed, let us see what these sticks can do.

1366 7-7-7 1.65v

1360 7-7-7 1.65v

1400 7-7-7 1.65v

1440 7-7-7 1.65v

1480 8-8-8 1.65v

At this point I dropped the divider down one more notch to test CAS6 operation

1080 6-6-6  1.65v

Conclusion

All in all this is a decent set of RAM for the money if the specified speed is your target range. Unfortunately, these are not the diamond in the rough for the extreme crowd and won’t get you any overclocking awards.

However, for the price of just over $100 USD, it’s hard to argue with the speed, timings and reliability that these sticks can give you, especially when you factor in OCZ’s excellent customer service and warranty.

The OCZ PC3-10666 Platinum Low Voltage earns the TechREACTION Silver Silicon Award!

You can purchase this kit here at Newegg.

Thanks to OCZ for the sample!