OCZ EL DDR PC-3700

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Today we're looking at the OCZ Technology EL DDR PC3700 series 466MHz DDR Memory. As it stands now, there are VERY few manufacturers selling memory rates at such an incredibly high speed and for this, I was really looking forward to bringing out this review for the mass of overclockers and tweakers out there.

OCZ Technology Inc. has been around since August of 2000 and working to provide consumers with quality PC products. I know there are quite a few folks out there that have heard or had bad experiences with OCZ (myself included), but I have been working with Ryan over the past couple of months lately, and I honestly have to say, he is working nearly day and night in order to change the way people are thinking about the company and make sure they are getting a fair chance at being seen in a positive light. Once any company starts to get a bad rep in the industry, it is certainly hard to turn that around, but with new ownership in place, coupled with a great marketing team, engineers and a great QOS program, I think OCZ is truly headed in the right direction.

But enough of that, lets get down and dirty with the product we have on hand today. The OCZ EL PC3700 DDR Memory.

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Overview

Right from the get go, I'm going to make it clear, that the memory we are testing/using here today is an OCZ Engineering Sample. What this means, is that the OCZ PC3700 is not widely available yet in the American Market. What we have is a sample of the first batch of official PC3700 memory to roll off the manufacturing line. While normal practice at Dev Hardware is not to review a product that you can't actually get your hands on, I felt strongly about releasing this review for 2 reasons. First and foremost, this memory is extremely fast and I want our readers to know what is available to them in order to have the best possible ingredients to build a fast and stable system. Secondly, Ryan has assured me that the product we are using here today, is indicative of what you will get if you purchased a stick of this memory at any store, on-line or retail alike. Lets take a look at the memory. 

 

  

You'll notice the markings showing the memory is an Engineering Sample as explained earlier. Also we see the excellent Copper Heat spreaders we have come to know from OCZ and is typical of what they use on all of their high performance memory. This is some high quality stuff, very heavy and installed very well on the memory sticks themselves. Quite a bit better than many other memories we have used here at DevH. Here's a quote from the OCZ website.

"OCZ Enhanced Latency PC-3700 memory using state of the art ULN technology is capable of achieving outrageous speeds of up to 466 MHz at CL2.5*. Add our copper heat spreader to maximize cooling and extend your rams life while increasing performance. This memory easily surpasses even the newly adopted PC-3200 standard. OCZ Enhanced Latency PC-3700 is the best performing DDR memory on the market. Period."

Currently, heat spreaders are somewhat more of an item of looks more than they are for performance reasons. However, memory is getting faster everyday and therefore hotter. Also, when serious overclocking comes into play, a heatspreader can play a vital role in stability and longevity of the memory. Lets take a close-up look at the OCZ copper spreaders on the memory stick.

Look closely and you can see that the spreader comes in good contact with the memory chip, therefore providing good heat transfer between the two. So what we are looking for, is the memory to transfer it's heat to the copper spreader and then dissapate it harmlessly elsewhere, anything to get it off the chip itself. Here is another shot of that.

OCZ with Copper Heatspreader

Now lets take a look at some Corsair PC3200 I have here to see what it looks like below.

Corsair with Aluminum Heatspreader

Again, while I don't believe heatspreaders are necessarily essential at this point, my thought is that if your going to do it, lets do it right. OCZ not only has superior copper heatspreaders, but they are also mounted quite a bit better than most memory sticks, and this should help keep the memory cooler while lating longer.

Lets take a quick look at the factory specifications of the PC3700 before moving on.

Specifications:

1. ULN Technology: (U)ltra (L)ow (N)oise shielded PCB
2. Lifetime Warranty
3. 256MB or 512MB Modules based on OCZ brand EL DDR IC
4. CL 2.5*
5. 233 (466) MHz*
6. 184 Pin Dimm
7. Unbuffered

Optional:

1. Retail boxed
2. Includes: memory installation guide.

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