which came in at 14-14-14- 34 @ 1.35V . at face value , the Special Edition memory isn ’ t so special . All things considered there would be no reason to purchase this kit save for the fancy heatsink , branding , the visuals and the exclusivity ( see what I did there ?). Fortunately , CORSAIR as usual understates the performance capabilities of the memory and have gone the extra mile here . Call it lacking confidence , catering for the worst-case scenario or something else , but there ’ s absolutely no reason why this memory kit cannot operate at 14-14-14-34 at the normal 1.35V . Out of all sticks tested , even the worst of the four was capable of this with zero tuning .
All of that isn ’ t unusual or anything to write home about . What is however is that you can easily operate this memory at 3,600MHz with zero tuning . This frequency is referenced in the literature for the memory as well , but just as with the primary timings , it is understated as for 4GHz is achievable as well . The only limit here will be the motherboard , but other than that it is as simple as pie . Granted you ’ re not going to reach 4GHz using C14 timings , however you can easily leave those set to AUTO on motherboards capable of the frequency . How the board will configure the memory is obviously not determined by the kit , but suffice to say you could easily reach 19-21-
4133MHz at 1.45V . Needless to say that operating the memory at 1.45V continuously will not in anyway jeopardize the memory and it is perfectly safe to do so .
The sheer scalability of this kit is perhaps what makes it so compelling for those who are solely interested in performance . It can easily perform on par with the best overclocking memory available for purchase ( No , the HOF memory isn ’ t available for purchase so that memory doesn ’ t count ) and perhaps is amongst the best money can buy .
Despite what many may consider a high price , it is cheaper than CORSAIR ’ s Vengeance DDR4 4266MHz kit , yet you ’ ll not only get more memory here , but better timings as well and of course significantly better performance as a result . So , you could pay more for an inferior product by all meaningful measurements . If there ’ s a kit that ’ s earned the “ Special Edition ” badge , it is
21-36 . Yes , these are relaxed timings , but the performance scaling is there for sure . More importantly such timings are better than those CORSAIR specs for their 4000MHz kit comprised of 4GB sticks rated at 19-23-23-45 .
4266MHz is possible at 1.35v however you ’ ll have to relax the timings to the point where performance is lower than what you ’ d achieve at 4000MHz . As such , you will see that all the compelling results were only up to 4GHz at 1.35V and of course
18 The OverClocker Issue 40 | 2017