G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1600MHz CL8 4GB Dual Channel Kit

**AFQ** · 22-05-11, 10:38 PM

G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1600MHz CL8 4GB Dual Channel Kit

Introduction:

G.SKILL, established in 1989, is one of the most popular memory manufacturers in the world. Their main aim is to provide superior memory products with excellent after-sales services to keep pace with ever growing needs of enthusiasts. All of their memory products need to pass rigorous tests and strict quality control procedures to make their way to the consumers. In addition to that hand tested in G.SKILL labs to ensure the highest product quality.

G.SKILL is currently providing high quality desktop memory, notebook memory and solid state drives.

Today, we’ll be having a look at G.SKILL Ripjaws 1600MHz DDR3 4GB Dual Channel Kit. It is rated at 1.6v with Cl8-8-8-24 timings. G.SKILL refers to Ripjaws as their ‘Gaming Series’.

Packaging and the Memory:

G.SKILL Ripjaws memory comes in a transparent plastic clam shell.

Clam shell also includes a paper leaflet with some information about G.SKILL and the memory kit itself.

This particular Ripjaws Kit comes with blue heatsinks. They are small as compared to usual memory heat spreader so it’ll not cause any major clearance issues with big CPU air coolers.

A hot looking red and black Ripjaws sticker is pasted onto both sides of the ram sticks.

Specifications are mentioned on the both sticks. This particular kit runs at 1600MHz with CL8 timings and 1.6v. Each stick carries 2GB of memory chips, which makes up a total of 4GB for two sticks, perfect for today’s dual channel system.

Ripjaws heatsinks are deigned to give optimal cooling to the memory chips.

Our Ripjaws Kit came with green PCB which ruins the aesthetics of the memory kit but I’ve also seen some Ripjaws kits with black PCB though color of PCB has no effect on performance of the memory. Its all about looks.

Specifications:

Test Setup:

Testing:

Like every other DDR3 memory, this kit runs at JEDEC standard (1333MHz, CL9) by default. To achieve its rated speeds, you need to enable XMP profile from BIOS. Enabling the XMP profile will take the memory to its rated speeds of 1600MHz CL8-8-8-24 with 1.6v.

Here is a shot of CPUz showing XMP, part number and other info of this memory kit.

I’ll overclock this memory far ahead of its XMP profile speeds but before we look at how well this memory kit overclocks let’s have a quick look at some facts about memory overclocking and my overclocking procedure:

I selected P55 chipset to test overclocking capability this memory kit instead of Sandy Bridge (P67/H67) because with P67 you can’t overclock the memory in the traditional manner. You can only adjust multiplier ratio which will change the memory speed to preset levels (i.e. 800MHz, 1066MHz, 1333MHz, 1600MHz, 1855MHz, 2133MHz and 2200MHz) but with P55 you can freely adjust the memory speed to whatever you like. Memory overclocking is a very difficult task. There are a lot of things you have to keep in mind to get the most out of it. There are many settings and you need to find the best possible combination. Increasing memory speed will not give you enough boost until you fine tune your timings too and other way around. Timings play a vital role in your memory performance. Then voltage comes into play, you can’t keep on increasing memory voltage especially with X58 and P55 chipset as memory controller (IMC) is located on your processor and too much voltage can damage it. To achieve higher memory clocks increasing memory voltage only will not help, you’ll need to increase IMC voltage as well. Overall, it’s a very complicated and time consuming process.

- As most of you know that memory is linked with base clock. We need to change base clock in order to change memory speed (in P55 and X58 ) hence it changes overall speed of processor but we’ll try to keep processor clock near 4.0GHz by changing multiplier when needed.
- Memory stability will be tested with MemTest, it’s a small but very handy tool to test stability of memory.
- I’ll test the memory modules in Dual Channel mode.

Below is a graph showing the overclocked speeds and timings of this Ripjaws memory kit:

G.SKILL Ripjaws 1600MHz kit did 1335MHz at CL6 and 1570MHz at CL7. That’s not impressive at all. Overclockability of this kit shines after CL7; we were able to achieve 1806MHz at its stock timings with a minor voltage bump, that’s 206MHz more than its stock speeds. 2024MHz at 9-9-9-24 and 2180MHz at 9-11-9-27 are also pretty good overclocks.

Let’s move on to some performance testing now, we’ll test our overclocked memory with a couple of different softwares.

- Lavalys Everest:

Lavalys created and developed market leading computer diagnostics, hardware monitoring, network audit, and benchmarking software solutions based on our proven, award-winning EVEREST technology.

We used Lavalys Everest Memory Benchmark tool to test read, write and copy speeds. Furthermore we also tested Latency.

Read

Write

Copy

Latency

- MaxxMEM Preview:

It tests your computer’s raw memory performance, combining copy, read, write and latency tests into one global score. It contains the same Memory benchmark routine as MaxxPI does. So your reached results will be comparable to Memory/Latency benchmarks done by MaxxPI.

Memory Score

Latency Score

Total MaxxMem Score

Final Words:

1600MHz frequency is pretty much standard these days with DDR3 memory. It should be the lowest speed one should get. With the release of 2nd Generation Intel Core i Series processors speed of the memory became more important since its IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) takes full advantage of memory’s speed and latency to give a fair amount of boost in performance.

G.SKILL Ripjaws Kit we have in our hands today is a fine 1600MHz 4GB Dual Channel kit. It gives fairly good performance at rated speeds and if you are an overclocking maniac, even then it wouldn’t disappoint you. It doesn’t have the best overclockability I’ve seen in a while but it’s not bad either.

1.6v of this kit is also an advantage as compared to 1.65v on most of the kits in the market. I know difference isn’t much but still it’s there.

This kit can be bought for 7000PKR here in Pakistan, which makes it a great value for money as compared to other memory kits in local market.

G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1600MHz CL8 kit gets our top pick award for great performance at an even greater price.

- Pros:
• Stock timings and speed
• Good Overclocking abilities
• Great looks
• Lifetime warranty

- Cons:
• Green PCB (??)

This G.SKILL Ripjaws 1600MHz CL8 and other G.SKILL products can be bought from IAMEXTREME.