Installation, Overclocking & Testing Procedures
Installing these modules is just like any other, simply slide them into your open memory slots in your motherboard.  Since these are low profile modules you shouldn’t have any issues getting them installed even if you have a larger CPU cooler.  Once installed go into your BIOS and enable the XMP profile and you are good to go!

Overclocking memory on the Z77 platform is actually pretty easy since you are overclocking the memory independently from your CPU.  Again the stock speed and timings of this memory is 1600MHz at 8-8-8-24 at 1.35v.  I decided to see if the memory would boot at 2133MHz, no go.  Keeping my settings at 2133MHz I loosened the timings and upped the voltage and was able to get the memory to be stable with timings of 10-10-10-30 at 1.5v.  Not bad at all for DDR3-1600 memory!

Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 680
Memory: Patriot Crucial Ballistix Tactical Low Profile 16GB
Power Supply: OCZ Fatal1ty Series 1000W
Storage: 750GB SATA Drive
Cooling: Thermaltake Frio OCK
Case: NZXT Phantom 820

We have a set battery of benchmarks for Memory reviews.  We have listed the applications we use for testing below.

SiSoftware Sandra
- Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
- Latency Benchmark
- Cache Benchmark
AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark
MaxxMem – Preview

Now let’s get to testing!