OCZ Blade 3x2GB PC3-17000 CL8 Memory Review

Memory Installation & Test Setup

Since we have already tested the Blade heat sinks for fitting in an EVGA X58 3X SLI motherboard, we figured we would use the EVGA X58 Classified for testing this kit with a Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme (TRUE).

With the heat sink reaching out over the memory slots we can see it would be a tight fit for the first slot. Using the primary red slots, however, is just fine. There is plenty of room regardless of where we have fans. In the second photo we are showing that a memory module will fit in the first slot with the heat sink in this position, but look closely at the down turned fin of the TRUE. This fin barely touches the OCZ Blade heat sink and in order to install the module with the heat sink already in place, we have to pry this fin up just a little. It is possible to install the module with the TRUE mounted but it is very tight and the back of the Blade module did get scratched up a little.

Turning the heat sink around to an East/West orientation leaves plenty of room for the memory, even with a 32mm fan installed. With no modules in the first slot we have lower the 120mm x 38mm fan down right to the heat sink screws so we get more air flow over the PWM heat sink. Obviously the fan would have to sit higher with a module in the first slot, or we could simply use a 120mm x 20mm fan.

The first part of our stability testing is going to discuss the fact that this memory doesn't exactly run at stock...ever. You see, there is no memory ratio that will allow the memory to run at the specified DDR3-2133. There are also no XMP profiles with these modules, like the PC3-16000 OCZ Blade modules. We mentioned with that kit that the variables involved to get DDR3-2000 to run stable were too many to trust static settings to be able to run the kit on various setups, that goes double for DDR3-2133. Needless to say, the memory boots up fine at BIOS defaults and the screen shots above show what the memory boots at with the BIOS cleared on the Classified. Let's now have a look at the complete setup we will be using for the testing, and overclocking of this memory.

Test Setup

Test Platform:
Memory:	OCZ Blade 3x2GB PC3-17000 8-9-8-24 (OCZ3B2133LV6GK)
Motherboard:	EVGA X58 Classified
Processor:	Intel Xeon W3540
Processor Cooling:	Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme-1366 CU Scythe Ultra Kaze 120mm x 38mm 2000RPM 87.6CFM (DFS123812L-2000) Adda 120 mm x 20mm 2050RPM 80.5CFM (AD1212MS-A73GL)
Thermal Paste:	Arctic Cooling MX-2
North Bridge Cooling:	Stock
South Bridge Cooling:	Stock
PWM Cooling:	Stock
Power Supply:	Corsair HX1000W
Video Card:	EVGA GTX295 (NVIDIA GeForce 186.18 WHQL)
Additional Fans:	Scythe Ultra Kaze 120MM 2000RPM 87.6CFM (DFS123812L-2000)
Hard Drives:	Seagate 7200.9 80GB SATAII 8MB cache
OS:	Windows Vista x64 SP1 (with all updates)
Ambient Temperature:	23C ~ 25C

Our test setup has changed a little bit, but it wasn't our choice. We have mentioned a couple times that not all processors are going to be able to handle running memory at DDR3-2133. This is because of the on-die memory controller of the i7 processor. We definitely ran into this issue during testing, but not only that, we had a motherboard tragically pass during this process as well. We will go over the details next in the Stability Testing section.