OCZ Flex XLC 2GB DDR2-1150

It was several months ago that we first had tested out the OCZ Flex XLC memory when we had used this DDR2 memory in Overclocking, The Natural Way. In this natural sub-zero overclocking expedition we had used OCZ's Flex XLC as our DDR2 memory of choice with an Abit AW9D motherboard, which was pushed to its death. However, we just wanted to share some more information on OCZ's Flex XLC PC2-9200 memory along with some benchmarks from Fedora 7.

In our natural sub-zero overclocking article, Michael had described the Flex XLC memory as follows:

Late last year OCZ Technology had announced they took their Xtreme Thermal Convection (XTC) memory heatspreader design a step further and branded it the Xtreme Liquid Convection (XLC) heatsink. Coming in contact with the RAM ICs is aluminum on both sides, while on top of that is an array of fins. Optionally, you can throw these memory heatspreaders into your water-cooling loop. With the copper liquid injection system, water is able to flow through the heatspreaders right below the series of fins. This memory water-cooling concept is not new as both Koolance and Thermaltake, but OCZ's product is unique in its design and that it is integrated with the retail package.

The design of the Flex XLC heatspreaders are certainly interesting and pack a lot of potential whether you're using water or air cooling, but we'll reserve final word on its performance till we share how well it handled the Michigan winter. The barbs for the water-cooling portion have an inner diameter of a quarter-inch, but no clamps or other securing mechanisms are included with the memory modules. OCZ's Flex XLC heatspreaders are similar to Corsair's Dominator modules except for the option of water-cooling. Below this cooling contraption, however, is a new 8-layer PCB design along with Micron D9 memory chips that were specially binned.

The OCZ Flex XLC PC2-9200 memory is rated to run at 1150MHz with latencies of 5-5-5-18 and come in a 2 x 1024MB kit. As with OCZ's other memory products, they are backed by a lifetime warranty along with their EVP (Extended Voltage Protection) rating -- you can push up to 2.40V in the Flex XLC memory before it will void the warranty. The Flex XLC memory modules use Micron's D9 memory chips and the memory PCB is composed of eight layers. Along with the PC2-9200 memory, OCZ Technology's Flex XLC memory is available in PC2-9600 (DDR2-1200MHz), PC2-6400 CL 3 (DDR2-800MHz), and PC2-6400 CL 4 (DDR2-800MHz) varieties.

We have been using OCZ's Flex XLC PC2-9200 memory for the past couple of months and to say the least we have been extremely pleased by this dual channel kit. We have tested this memory on over a dozen motherboards and have yet to run into any compatibility issues or other problems related to this RAM. In this article we have enclosed some Linux benchmarks from Enemy Territory, Quake 4, LAME compilation, LAME encoding, and RAMspeed to show the capabilities of this memory.

Outside of the PC2-9200 memory, composing this test setup was an ASUS P5N-E SLI motherboard, a NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX, Intel's Core 2 Duo E6400 processor, SilverStone's Zeus 750W PSU, and a Western Digital 160GB SATA 2.0 hard drive. With each benchmark we had tested the OCZ Flex XLC memory at DDR2-800MHz (E6400 @ 2.13GHz), DDR2-1000MHz (E6400 @ 2.66GHz), DDR2-1100MHz (E6400 @ 3.00GHz), and DDR2-1150MHz (E6400 @ 3.06GHz) speeds with SPD timings.