Overclocking Results

Some of you readers probably were thinking why I would use such weird settings for performance tests. I need to say that the G.Skill ECOs are one of the most interesting kits I´ve ever tested. This kit simply doesn´t care about the CL or tRP settings. It´s all about tRCD and that´s how Benchmark Reviews chose the settings. Since I did not knew which ICs were beyond the hood all I had to do was to test every setting possible and compile all my results. This quickly lead to me to discover the key for overclocking this kit was simply raising the tRCD while keeping the rest of the timings as low as possible. Let´s have a look to the chart:

Starting with 6-6-6 timings, we could achieve 1260MHz at 1.35v. Raising vDIMM to 1.5v gave us 1333MHz and finally 1.6v didn´t add that much. The G.Skill ECO kit doesn´t really shine with high frequencies but it does a pretty good job on low latencies. The kit was even able to work at 1333MHz 6-6-5-21 Timings!

After that, we moved to 6-7-6-21 1T and this configuration is really where this kit rocks. Reaching 1333MHz was easy with barely 1.35 volts (while the kit is rated at 7-7-7-21 2T with the same voltage). Raising vDIMM up to 1.5v gave us 1600MHz and finally 1.6v didn´t help that much. Please notice that 1600MHz 6-7-6-21 1T was the best configuration for all our performance results, so, even for motherboards which doesn´t support low-vDIMM voltages this kit should be a nice pair for your processor with low timings and just 1.5 volts.

Finally, rising latencies to 6-8-6 let us start at 1600MHz with barely 1.35 volts! This one could be a nice setup for low-vDIMM motherboards since you´re paying for a 1333MHz kit. This time we could only achieve 1730MHz but that´s almost 400 extra Megahertz from default. While Benchmark Reviews tested 6-9-6 settings they didn´t helped anywhere on frequencies, so we just decided to leave that setup out of the chart.

Please keep in mind that while all memory kits are different, some kits could do better or worse than this, but considering the G.Skill F3 10666CL7D kit was done for mid/high-end P55 motherboards paired with i5-i7 processors, there are big chances on achieving higher frequencies than I got, especially considering my setup was based on a low-end H55+Intel Core i3. Now, before you start asking why I chose this setup, remember I wanted to show you how good could this kit be for HTPCs, where you use very "basic" components and the airflow and heat dissipation is very limited because of the small form factor cases. Also, this way I can show you the advantages of power consumption in a better way rather than utilizing a system that consumes 150 watts or more on idle mode. Let´s head to the Power Consumption paragraph to see the results.

G.Skill ECO F3 10666CL7D kit working at 1600MHz 6-7-6-21 1T with 1.5 volts. Nice setup indeed!

Power Consumption Results

As I´ve mentioned before, the reason to try this memory on a low-end H55 motherboard paired with the Intel Core i3 530 CPU was to achieve a very low but still powerful machine. Using a 150 watts PSU would be much more efficient than pairing this with a 700 watts high-end PSU. Also, this way we will analyze power consumption with different voltages and the results will have a bigger gap-percentage compared to a high-end system. All the results were obtained with a P3 International Kill-a-watt and the consumption was measured directly on the plug of the PSU, which means the whole system consumption is being measured (except for the monitor or any external peripherals).

At idle tests, using 1.35v against the 1.5-1.65 volts recommended by Intel gives us close to 3 watts less. In the best case there was a 4 watts difference between 1.35v and 1.65v. Maybe this sounds like a joke for some of you, but considering this is almost 10% from total system consumption I wouldn´t say this is irrelevant. Adding some Load with Prime 95 shows a bigger gap between different voltages. The 300 mili-Volts difference is actually doing something there. In the best case, there is a 9 watts difference between 1.35v and 1.65v. Again, 9 watts could sound like nothing, but in this system it represents 10% of the power consumption, so if you really want to achieve a low power consumption system, low-voltage memory kits like this are something you must definitively consider, and hey, they are cheap and clock very well with low latencies. What else could you ask for? Maybe they would even work with lower voltages if your motherboard allows you to do so (some motherboards offer 1.2v and higher for vDIMM operation).

If you have a high-end PC and you don´t care about 5-10 watts difference, don´t forget this kit is also good when overclocked and it´s cheaper than many kits on the market. Also, there are high probabilities that yours will achieve higher frequencies on a high-end P55 motherboard with a Core i5/Core i7 CPU.

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