G.Skill ARES 16GB 2133MHz CL9 Kit (F3-2133C9Q-16GAB) Review

[siopao1984]

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With the introduction of Intel's Socket 2011 processors for enthusiasts and professionals not too long ago, it spawned a market for good XMP 1.3 DDR3 compliant kits to maximize the quad channel bandwidth and take advantage extra memory dividers north of 2400+MHz that the new platform brings. We have previously published a review of the G.Skill ARES 2133MHz 8GB kit and today we have the 16GB quad channel version for your consideration.

Specifications
Model Number	F3-2133C9Q-16GAB
Series	ARES
System	DESKTOP
System Type	DDR3
Main Board	INTEL
M/B Chipset	X79 / P67 / Z68
Capacity	16GB (4GBx4)
Multi-Channel Kit	Quad Channel kit
Tested Speed	DDR3-2133 MHz (PC3-17000)
Tested Latency	9-11-10 2N
Tested Voltage	1.65V
Registered/Unbuffered	Unbuffered
Error Checking	Non-ECC
Type	240-pin DIMM
SPD Speed	1600 MHz
SPD Voltage	1.5V
Height	33 mm / 1.30 inch
Warranty	Lifetime
Fan lncluded	No
Features	Intel XMP (Extreme Momery Profile)Ready

G.Skill's ARES memory modules differ from their popular RipjawsZ series only by the use of a low profile blue heatspreader to avoid height clearance issues with tall heatsink towers. Both share the same 6-layer PCB and Hynix H9C DDR3 memory chips which are generally well received by the overclocking community.

Read more: G.Skill ARES 16GB 2133MHz CL9 Kit (F3-2133C9Q-16GAB) Review by VR-Zone.com

[siopao1984]

For our test setup, we used our favourite ASUS ROG Rampage IV Extreme motherboard equipped with a water-cooled Core i7-3960X running at 4.8GHz. We have active cooling for the rams and VRMs to dissipate the considerable amount of heat when overclocking.



If you have plenty of time/patience to experiment and have the technical know-how, there are plenty of memory tweaking options on this board (timings, sub-timings, signal and voltages) to keep you occupied on lonely nights.







With a recent utility like AIDA64 or CPU-Z, we can read the SPD/XMP (Intel Extreme Memory Profile, a JEDEC SPD extension for DDR3 SDRAM DIMMs) settings programmed into each memory module. During our testing, we tightened the DRAM command rate to 1T instead of the XMP default 2T.



To highlight the advantages of using higher speed rams on our benchmarks, we pitted the G.Skill against run of the mill 1333MHz value rams (with a rated latency of 9-9-9-24), and then also overclocked it at a JEDEC compliant 1600MHz 11-11-11-28.



Benchmarks



AIDA64 Memory Benchmark





Linpack HPC Benchmark





PCMark 7





WinRaR





Battlefield 3





Left 4 Dead 2





The use of lower latency/higher frequency modules does play its part in CPU and memory intensive scenarios like content creation and heavy I/O operations, not so much in gaming where the bottleneck is usually the graphics card.

[siopao1984]

Overclocking

On the same XMP 1.3 programmed timings of (9-11-10-2 and with a raised 1.75V VDIMM set in the bios, we managed 2282MHz @ CL9.





2400MHz on CL10





2520MHz on CL11 (Effective memory bandwidth not worth the effort for 24/7 computing)





Conclusion

Using lower latency/higher frequency memory does help speed up some applications, albeit not as drastic as a CPU or graphics card upgrade. A quick check on Newegg shows the G.Skill ARES 16GB 2133MHz kit retailing for US$149.99 while the average 1333MHz value ram sells at around US$90. Considering that the target audience is high end enthusiasts who most likely have relatively expensive processors and graphics card(s), we find that this price premium is small in the whole scheme of things.

[philcarr]

lami-a ani uuuuuuuuuuuuuuy!!!

[chang87]

hala grabe ka.choi ani nga ram!

[BrianBCBF]

haist, magdamgo n sad q ani..

[jimmy128]

me want.. it fits my color scheme

[akomao]

^ ahaha! palit na boss,

naay red ani? anyhow. i think i can't afford

[thewicked46]

i'd prefer this one GSkill RipjawsX 32GB 2133MHz DDR3(F3-2133C9Q-32GXH)

[yoyski101]

Grabeha ani oi. Bisag pila pa imo e open ani na program di jud mo lag cgru. Bisag usa lang ka Ram ani lipay nako