Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866MHz DDR3 Review - PAGE 3

Corsair's Platinum series 16GB kit will be put to the test on our benchmarking system featuring the following hardware configuration. Please take note that the comparison kits have a higher speed ratings than that of Corsair's Dominator Platinum series 1866MHz kit. Please remember to keep this in mind when comparing the benchmark results.

Test Setup:

• Processor: Intel i7 2600k overclocked to 4.4GHz
• Motherboard: ASRocks Z68 Extreme3 Gen3
• Memory: Corsiar Platinum Series 16GB
• Video Card: XFX HD 7970 Black Edition
• Power Supply:Antec TPQ-1200 1200W
• Hard Drive: Seagate ST31000
• Optical Drive: ASUS 24X DVD
• OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
• Case: Cooler Master CM Storm Stryker

Benchmarks:

• Battlefield 3
• Dirt 3
• Sisoftware Sandra 2012
• PCMark Vantage
• Handbrake & Winrar

Comparison Kits:

• Corsair XMS3 2000MHz
• G.SKILL Ripjaws Z DDR3 2133MHz
• Corsair Dominator GT 2133MHz
• G.SKILL Ripjaws + Turbulence II 2000MHz

Overclocking

Overclocking the Dominator Platinum series was easy enough. To start, I immediately set the XMP profile which in turn clocked the memory to 1866MHz. I then began increasing the BCLK until the system would not boot (BCLK 103.5). At this point I tweaked the timings to set them at 10-10-10-27, with no adjustments made to the voltages yet, rebooted and had a successful post. Looking for more boost, I set the BCLK to 104 and rebooted to another successful post. We managed to fine tune the final BCLK to 106 with a memory speed of 1979MHz and timings set at 11-12-11-29 2T. This required a voltage setting of 1.73V, which is a little more juice than I prefer. This translated into a 113MHz increase over the stock speed, which was just the about the highest level we could hit while remaining stable.