OCZ Blade ST 2000MHz Low Voltage DDR3 Kit

The max speed officially supported on a Core i3/i5 CPU is 1333MHz, and most will know too well that that even lower priced Intel H55/P55 Motherboards can support a 200 BCLK. If you like to dabble in the dark art of overclocking there are a few good reasons to choose a 2000MHz (PC3-16000) RAM kit. Firstly you have the options of lower voltage and tighter timings at lower speeds, and next you have the added benefit of higher memory bandwidth at the top speed. Last but not least though is the overclocking headroom, sure you could try to push your 1600MHz kit to 2000MHz but there are not too many kits that will do that, and you will certainly have to pay a premium. OCZ have a broad range of DDR3 RAM from basic to extreme, today Benchmark reviews will be testing the Blade ST 2000MHz Low Voltage Dual Channel 4GB Kit (PN: OCZ3BST2000LV4GK) priced at $106.99 for your reading pleasure.

The Blade ST 2000MHz kit from OCZ runs at its rated speed with CL9-9-9-24 timings @ 1.65v. During testing we were able to lower these timings and the voltage but along with this was the sacrifice of speed, unfortunately it wasn't possible to tighten the timings or lower the voltage at the rated speed.

The OCZ Blade ST 2000MHz RAM kit is designed specifically for i3/i5/i7 CPU's based on the Intel P55 chipset, although looking at the color scheme one might believe otherwise. As long as your setup can support the rated voltage of 1.65v there is no real reason why an AMD system couldn't take advantage of this kit, this is further backed by the SPD table (which we will get into later in this article).

Manufacturer: OCZ Technology Group, Inc.
Product Name: Blade ST Low-Voltage Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
Model Number: OCZ3BST2000LV4GK
Price As Tested: $170.99 at Amazon

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by OCZ.

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