Testing Method & Test Setup

To test the overclocking capabilities of the memory we are going to use Intel’s recently released Haswell platform. As memory overclocks are known to vary between different motherboards, we are going to perform the tests using two different platforms to be sure that our numbers are reliable.

Motherboard	ASUS Maximus VI Gene (BIOS 0607) Gigabyte Z87X-OC (BIOS F5q)
CPU	Intel Core i7-4770K ES @ 4.0 GHz
Graphic card	ASUS GTX 580
Memory	GSkill Ares Blue F3-2400C11D-16GAB
SSD	Samsung PM840 Pro
PSU	Seasonic Platinum 660 Watts
OS	Windows 7, 64 bit SP1

Even though Haswell is very flexible on the memory frequency one can set, very few people actually do base clock (BCLK) overclocking on their daily setups. Therefore, instead of our previous procedure of fixing the voltage and raising the frequency in 10MHz steps we are now going to fix the frequency and minimize the voltage in 0.01V steps.
As usual, our stability method of choice is HCI Memtest. Since we are dealing with a 16 GB kit, we use eight 1500 MB instances and call things stable if we see all of them to go past 100% without showing a single error.
Not to get things too complicated, we only set the primary timings, command rate (1T) and the memory voltage by hand while the rest of the settings is left for the motherboard and SPD to agree on.

Results

Traditionally, our aim is to see how memory reacts to voltage changes and in case with Hynix MFR this reaction translates in ability to run higher frequencies without having to raise the CAS latency. As to three other primary timings, the main factor for lowest stable values of those is frequency with voltage playing very little effect.
Despite being capped by inability to operate above 1.80V on one side and being limited by 1333MHz on the other, the 2400C11 version of Ares has demonstrated some impressive numbers. For a start, our sample could easily do the specifications of much more expensive 2666C12 Trident-X model and when things came to the lower frequency range, things were equally interesting with stability at DDR3-2000 7-10-10 and DDR3-2200 8-11-11 being within reach.
On the contrary, this particular sample would have failed the specs of similarly priced 2133C9 and 2400C10 models, hence users looking to run the memory in the range between 1100 and 1200MHz at lowest possible timings without exceeding the psychological barrier of 1.65V might be willing to look elsewhere.

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Page 1 - Introduction

Page 2 - Closer Look

Page 3 - Photo Gallery

Page 4 - Results

Page 5 - Conclusion