Installation
Test Rig:
Intel i7 860 LGA 1156 CPU
ASRock P55 Deluxe P55 motherboard
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB video card
OCZ Z Series 650 Watt power supply
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler
Ikonik Zaria midtower
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit SP2
With both the P55 and X58 chipsets, you do not use the memory slot closest to the CPU unless you are running 4 modules/8 modules. This is different from earlier Intel motherboards and is still causing confusion. A couple of motherboards I have received had labels placed on the memory slots warning of that.
Place the memory in the proper memory slots. Start the rig if this is replacement memory, complete the build if this is a new build.
The memory should boot at DDR3-1600 8-8-8-24, 1.65v. It did exactly as it was supposed to. Of course this memory can be used in other applications, the SPD table shows various JEDEC standards, all under DDR3-1600, and all at 1.5v, which actually is still the DDR3 standard voltage.
Overclocking
I’ve been using Corsair memory for I guess six or so years, all got excellent overclocking results. So obviously I had high hopes for the Dominator DDR3-1600 i7/i5.
First I tried lowering the latency while retaining the DDR3-1600 speed. I was able to get a very stable 7-6-6-24. Next I kept the 8-8-8-24 timings and raised the memory frequency. After a lot of experimentation, I got the Dominator to DDR3-1756 8-8-8-24.
Finally I tried for a max overclock. I decided not to raise the CAS latency higher than 10, because loosening the timings too much will lose any performance gains you might have seen with the higher frequency. I was pleased to get a clock of DDR3-2008 10-9-9-24.
