Joined on 06/24/01
Decent overclockers
Pros: - Overclocks to 2400MHz 11-12-12-31-1T @ 1.52V on 4770K - Low voltage - v5.29 is Hynix MFR
Cons: - High price $189.99 - Useless heatspreader
Overall Review: First thing I did after overclocking was to remove the heat-spreaders. Now the RAM is normal height and does not block the heatsink fan airflow. The heat-spreaders are just cheap metal punch outs stuck on there with some foam tape. 933MHz to 1200MHz is a almost a 30% gain in frequency while staying ~1.5v, very decent overclock. Check the package if you can v5.xx are Hynix MFR which are supposedly a bit better for overclocking at high frequencies.
2 out of 4 went bad
Pros: - Quiet - Low platter count, high areal density - Good performance - SMART feature supported
Cons: I bought 4 of these for my QNAP SS-439 Pro NAS. 1 drive had a problem being detected, I had to unplug and then plug it back in for it to be recognized. This caused the RAID5 container to have to be rebuilt every time. Drive 2 started to get bad blocks/sectors after 56 days. I have not replaced it via RMA yet, I just had an extra spare so I am using that for now. We'll see how the RMA goes with Samsung...
Overall Review: This drive has good specs and it's quiet, but reliability seems to be much poorer than WD Scorpio line. I can't imagine using this in a non-RAID setup, you could lose all your data at once without warning.
Great timings, perfect SPD, good frequency, great compatibility
Pros: - The timings are excellent: 38-37-37-73 - Low voltage: 1.10v - Good frequency when laptop can't run top speed (rated 5,600MHz): 5,200MHz (actual) - Temp range: 39.3C - 44.8C (DIMM#1) 41.5C - 47.8C (DIMM #2) (modules are stacked)
Cons: - Slightly more expensive compared to Crucial or G.Skill
Overall Review: Laptop tested: Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (H7604) 2023 As we all know with laptop RAM you have to be more careful when choosing because there are no options in the BIOS to tweak the frequency or timings. I initially tried the Crucial 5,200MHz but it would only run at 4800MHz with poor timings. The Kingston Fury is able to run at 5,200MHz with very low timings @ CL38. Although the SPD is slightly different, it is able to down-clock without any issues while keeping tight timings for such large capacity SoDIMMs. Overall they are a no-brainer if you need 64GB and high frequency with tight timings for 2023.
Solid 3800MHz and boots at 4000MHz
Pros: - Good value - Large capacity - Scales frequency well - Temperature sensor - RGB LEDs?
Cons: - Timings on the high/slow side - Higher voltage required - RGB LEDs? - Hynix MJR die - Can't run 1T (needs Gear Down Mode enabled)
Overall Review: - Gigabyte X570SI - AMD Ryzen 5950X When going beyond 3,200MHz the CPU's memory controller is key. The frequency scaling is quite good and it would boot at 4,000MHz with 2,000MHz Infinity Fabric, but I couldn't get it stable enough to run 24/7. Also tried 3600MHz @ C16 and pure 1T but it wouldn't run stable at all. At these high speeds or tight timings, I would fault the CPU over the RAM. The main challenge here is capacity vs. speed. I settled for 3,800MHz @ C18 which is acceptable given the large capacity. I have tested with TESTMEM5 using 1usmus tests and it's solid with the ZenTimings values from the pics. If you want capacity and only have 2 RAM slots this is a good kit.
QNAP TS-670
Pros: - Cas Latency 9 - 1.35V
Cons: - $134.99 (2014 prices haha)
Overall Review: Installed in a QNAP TS-670 NAS. Works without issues, QNAP TS-670 system is able to detect correct timings and speed. Not sure if it's setting the voltage to 1.5v or 1.35V. It's been running great since 4/6/2014, today is 3/19/2016, so almost 2 years of non-stop 24/7 operation!
Good video cards
Pros: - Very quiet - Only requires 1 x 6-pin PCIe connector - High clocks - Quality Samsung GDDR5 - Heatsink and fan cool the core very well
Cons: - Mediocre performance at 1080p
Overall Review: Physically the video card is great, no issues with ASUS design. It boosts nicely to 1241MHz with a little bit of overclocking. Card barely hits 64C even when overclock, RAM can hit 6750MHz easily. I tested mostly with Starcraft 2 HOTS which is not very demanding. The PC has an i5 3570 CPU and 8GB of RAM. SC2 performance was mediocre at 1080p. Frames/sec dropped all the way down to 1fps when the game was running with many units on the map. I can't imagine it will do much better with the newer DX11 FPS type games. I would invest a little more money for a GTX 660/670.