Closer Look

We begin the review by looking at some packaging. Because we’re dealing with a non ordinary G.Skill memory, the DDR3-2600 version of TridentX DDR3 is delivered in a cardboard box rather than a plastic tray and is equipped with its own cooling device.



To make sure you don’t mistake these for a mainstream product, G.Skill have added a red-on-black color scheme and some custom transformable heatspreaders to TridentX’s appearance. Of course, the styling is not something that can be objectively evaluated, but it is obvious that the heatspreaders were not designed with functionality being the main priority as their surface area is way too low.





Usually, we do not hesitate to separate heatspreaders from the modules but due to our previous TridentX experience, we are not going to do it. As we saw with 8GB sticks, there is a high likelihood of damage by tearing the ICs right off the PCB and even if we succeed, a relabeling campaign recently started by G.Skill will not provide any direct information about the IC maker. Alternatively, there are many indirect sources such as IC dimensions, white dots on IC sides and “1500” numbers in the SN, all of which indicate Samsung, with their only 2Gb model being capable of such spec being the revision D.




By being able to read SPD contents, CPU-Z reports that our modules feature six JEDEC profiles for better cross-platform compatibility topped up with a pair of misread XMP which, on Intel platforms, will actually set the memory up to speeds advertised in the specification.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 4 - Results
Page 2 - Closer Look	Page 5 - Some SuperPi 32M
Page 3 - Photo Gallery	Page 6 - Conclusion

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