Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Patriot Sector 5 (PGV38G1600ELK)


Recently my main rig went under.Luckily almost everything went on sale this cyber Monday, so I picked up a set of Patriot Sector 5 (PGV38G1600ELK) for my old 1366 rig, here is a quick review of it, enjoy.

Specification:
Capacity– 8GB (2 x 4GB)
Speed– 1600MHz
Timing– 9-9-9-24
Voltage– 1.65v
Features
-          XMP Ready
-          Equipped with advance aluminum heat-dispersing shields
-          100% Tested and Verified
-          RoHS Compliant
-          Tested on Intel P55 chipset

Quick look:

 
Right above is the Sector 5 PGV38G1600ELK it comes with two sticks of 4GB total of 8GB in dual channel setup, great for any 24/7 rig anywhere from office work, video editing to high performance gaming.


I have to be honest, I didn’t think much of those stock aluminumheat spreader came with the memory, it may be a little hard to see, but on top of the ram there is my 16GB microSD card from my cell phone, it’s extremely thin (no thicker than the microSD chip) and feels very cheaply made.

Here is another look at the “cheaply” made stock heat spreader

 
What you don’t feel is from those heat spreader is how efficient they are; in the tests below I will have a thermometer measuring both the room temp and the PCB/IC teem.

Testing Setup:
-          CPU: Intel Core i7 970 @ Stock.
-          CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Gemini II with 2x Antec Tri-Cool 120mm
-          Motherboard: EVGA 4-Way SLi E762
-          Hard Drive: Seagate 80GB 7200.12
-          Video Card: ATi 4350 1GB
-          OS: Windows 7 64bit 7600 with No Service Pack

Testing software:
-          SuperPi1M and 32M with NO tweaks
-          Lavalys Everest Memory Benchmark

Here we have SuperPi 1M and 32M bench scores.
 (Lower the better)
(Lower the better)
 

The special large heat spreaderdesign made it very air dynamic effective, but at the same time will not get in the way of larger CPU coolers. In the picture below is the temperature of the memory and the room temperature

 (as showing above, CPU temp indicates PCB/IC temp, SYS is room temp)


 
Right here we have the temperature of the memory that’s running SuperPi 32m benchmark at 1866 @ 11-11-11-31-1T-146 @ 1.80v.

(as showing above, CPU temp indicates PCB/IC temp, SYS is room temp)

 
I have been doing some research, and seems like this Sector 5 from Patriot is using the stander Elpidaintegratedcircuits(IC), they are huge fans of power, it require more voltage to achieve higher clocks then others, but at the same time they have better timings at the same clock. It comes’stockat 1600MHz @ 9-9-9-24-1T-128 @ 1.65v, but I was able to overclock it very easily, it’s able to run the memory at 1600MHz @ 8-8-8-21-1T-128 to 1866MHz @ 11-11-11-31-1T-143 @ 1.70v, I am very pleased with its surprising overclocking ability.

After my stander SuperPi tests I felt like there are more I can get out of those bad boys, so I fired up the Lavalys Everest Memory Benchmark and here is some numbers:

(All the numbers below are average of 3 runs that’s no more than 3% a part)

 (Higher is better)


 (Lower is better)

 
Pros:
Price, very cheap after Mail-in-Rebate
Nicely designed heat spreaderkeeps the memory running very cool
Great overclocking ability
Lifetime warranty
Without changing the stock voltage, only 1.65v I was able to taking it to a whole new level (2000MHz 10-10-10-31-1T-143)

Cons:
Elpida IC requiresa lot more voltage to achieve higher clocks then others.


Bottom Line:
At firstIthought it was going to be a huge disappointment, then I got about 4hrs of extensive testing, and I was amazed. It was very easy to overclock, after I put the memory in the slots, took me about 5 min to get the setting right (4hrs time = running SuperPi 32m (avg. about 11min per run + restart), weighting the review, and trying to do homework all at the same time), and now I could not be more satisfied with both its stock performance and overclocking ability then I could ever ask for with the low price. The perfect mixture of black and red gives a little extra icing on the cake; it was worth every penny of it.

 Here is a quick video of the memory.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCxDoMV2iPU