G.Skill Flare DDR3 2000 MHZ C7 AMD kit review - Specifications and Features

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 08/08/2010 02:00 PM [ ] 0 comment(s)

F3-16000CL7D-4GBFLS (2Gx2)

So the memory kit tested today come from that Flare series armed with PSC ICs, which relates (Flare) to the heat spreader design of the DIMM module.

Main Board	AMD ( For Phenom II x6 only )
System	Desktop
System Type	DDR3
M/B Chipset	AMD 890 Series
CAS Latency	7-9-7-24-2N
Capacity	4GB(2GB x 2)
Speed	DDR3-2000 (PC3 16000)
Test Voltage	1.65 Volts
PCB
Registered/Unbuffered	Unbuffered
Error Checking	Non-ECC
Type	240-pin DIMM
Warranty	Lifetime

Judging from the specifications provided by G.Skill, they really do recommend this memory to be used with AMD's six core processors only, preferably in combo with one of the following motherboards:

ASUS M4A89TD PRO
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO
ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3

The motherboards recommendation is there because G.Skill and ASUS worked really hard together to maximize the utmost stability and a user friendly experience. Now that doesn't mean that this memory won't work at other motherboards, contrary, we gave it a try and if you manually tweak the BIOS settings yourself you can achieve advertised frequency and performance quite easily.

Why then is one of the above motherboards so much recommended ? Well, we wanted to figure that out for ourselves and asked ASUS to ship in a M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 (which we'll be using for this review). We flashed the latest BIOS in there and from there on, it's all easy. Simplicity at it's best. In the BIOS you go towards the Ai Tweakers section, hit CPU overclocking and select D.O.C.P. (D.O.C.P. relates to memory overclocking via the baseclock frequency).

Once D.O.C.P. is selected, then one tab below it you'll find the option DRAM O.C. profile, you select profile #1, save and boot into Windows with your memory completely configured at 2000 MHZ CAS 7 1.65V. The way it works is that the baseclock is increased a little to 250 MHz, your multiplier will run at 13 and then the profile tweaks everything that needs to be tweaked including voltages.

Overclocking memory to 2000 MHz CAS7 has never been this easy really ... this literally is 3 seconds work. Seriously, for AMD platforms it's one of the few memory kits we have seen we consider to be extremely uber cool.

G.Skill likely produced a limited number of these kits, but look around and you will find them in the stores.

The Flare kit is US$ 179.99 on newegg.com, in for example Germany it is 177 Euro. But head on over to the next page where we'll startup a product photo-shoot after which this article will dive into a benchmark session. Hey, we know you like it !

G.Skill Flare memory kit

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