Storage World

When Intel officially launched its Skulltrail platform in February of this year, many enthusiasts and members of the tech press scoffed at its requirement of FB-DIMMs, or fully-buffered DDR2 memory modules. At the time, even the fastest FB-DIMMs available were rated for only 667MHz—a far cry from the 1.8GHz+ DDR3 memory available for other high-end desktop platforms. Another complaint was that Skulltrail, which consists of Intel’s D5400XS motherboard and two Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processors, officially supported memory speeds of up to 800MHz, even though 800MHz FB-DIMMs weren’t available yet.

Kingston, however, was at the ready. A few weeks after Skulltrail hit, the company launched a dual-channel 4GB DDR2 FB-DIMM kit rated for operation at 800MHz. The KVR800D2D4F5K2/4G kit comprises a pair of 2,048MB FB-DIMMs with latencies of 5-5-5 at 1.8V. Each 2GB FB-DIMM is adorned with simple, flat, black heat spreaders that were adequate, although FB-DIMMs do run relatively hot because of the advanced memory buffer that resides on every stick.

To test the Kingston KVR800D2D4F5K2/4G kit, I installed it into a Skulltrail-powered system, equipped with a GeForce 8800 GTX and running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. According to SiSoft Sandra XII SP2′s memory bandwidth benchmark, the kit mustered 4.85GBps of bandwidth and 116.7fps in a low-resolution/low-quality Crysis benchmark.

Although these relatively low-clocked FB-DIMMs can’t put up the same kind of memory bandwidth scores as highend DDR2 or DDR3 desktop memory kits, they’re a perfect fit for Skulltrail-based systems.

KINGSTON VALUERAM 4GB DDR2 SDRAM MEMORY MODULE – 4GB – 200MHZ DDR2-400/PC2-3200 – ECC – DDR2 SDRAM (KVR400D2E3K2-4G)

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With DRAM prices approaching historic lows and an ever-growing installed base of 64-bit operating systems, 4GB memory kits are becoming more prevalent. Corsair, for example, now offers an assortment of DDR2 and DDR3 memory kits with 4GB capacities, whereas just last year 2GB was the norm.

The Dominator XMS3 TW3X4G1600C9DHXNV G is one of Corsair’s premium 4GB (2x 2,048MB), dual-channel DDR3 kits, targeted at users of Nvidia’s nForce 790i SLI platform, as the “NV G” in its product name suggests. The NV G also indicates that this memory kit is EPP 2.0-compatible, which makes configuring the kit to operate at its rated frequency of 1,600MHz quick and easy, and users won’t have to risk overclocking their processors to hit those speeds. And the Dominator branding means the kit is outfitted with Corsair’s excellent DHX cooling technology that cools not only the underlying DRAMs but also the PCB.

The 1.6GHz kit requires 1.8V to operate and offers 9-9-9-24 latencies. Latencies that high may be disappointing compared to some lower-capacity DDR3, but they are not out of the ordinary for high-capacity DDR3 kits such as this one.

We tested this particular Dominator memory kit in an nForce 790i SLI Ultra-based Asus Striker II Extreme motherboard, equipped with a Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor, GeForce 8800 GTX, and Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. With the RAM running at its rated frequency of 1.6GHz, it offered up 8.4GBps of memory bandwidth in SiSoft Sandra XII SP2 and 132.6fps in a low-resolution/low-quality Crysis benchmark. With a bump in voltage to 1.9V, I was able to overclock the kit to 1,820MHz, which resulted in 9.5GBps of available bandwidth and 134.8fps in Crysis.

These sticks make yet another quality memory kit from Corsair.

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Among a raft of new products from the WD is this laptop speedster. It’s color-coded according to Western Digital’s new system, which is intended to guide buyers to the right drive for their needs. Buy a Black drive for performance use, a Green drive if you’re all about low energy consumption, or a Blue drive if you just want a bog-standard value model that lies between the two extremes.

The Scorpio Black line ranges from 80 to 320GB. Look for the BJKT model suffix if you want one with a free-fall sensor that can automatically park the heads if you drop your notebook. The WD3200BEKT was tested comes without the sensor for $20 less than the WD3200BJKT. We see no reason to go cheap here, it’s your data we’re talking about.

Performance-wise, the Scorpio Black can hang with the best 7,200rpm, 3.5inch drives in most tasks, but not lengthy linear reads. It’s deathly quiet and has as long a warranty as you’ll find.

Get your Western Digital 320GB Scorpio here

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