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, 9-9-9-24 at 1.35v. I decided to move the memory up to 1866MHz. That required a voltage bump up to 1.5v and loosening the timings to 10-10-10-30. After that passed the stability test I bumped it up again to 2133MHz. I was able to get that speed stable with timings of 11-11-11-30 at 1.65v. Not bad for 1600MHz memory!
Our test system is comprised of the following items.
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 680
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport Low Profile 16GB
Power Supply: OCZ Fatal1ty Series 1000W
Storage: 750GB SATA Drive
Cooling: Thermaltake Frio OCK
Case: Thermaltake Armor Revo
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!
