Intro
BH5... the Lich King. Any avid overclocker who is worth his salt and has been involved in the OC scene for a while has at least heard of the legendary Winbond BH5 RAM. This RAM was heralded for it's ability to keep low/tight timings (2-2-2-5 1T) at rediculous overclocked speeds (250+MHz) as long as you could feed it the juice it needed (3.5V+). BH5 is back from the dead! OCZ has arranged to have new BH5 chips made from old dies. The result is a lightning quick pair of 512MB sticks available for under $160! Back in the day when BH5 was at it's height in polularity and demand it wasn't that uncommon to find this type of RAM priced over $300 for a similar pair.
I will be testing the OCZ PC3200 Gold Edition RAM in two different systems. Since this RAM simply loves voltage I knew the max 3V that my Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe could deliver wouldn't do the trick to show this aspect of the BH5 chips. I gave a local call to my bud, Adam (aka. SpikeShot) who runs a sweet overclocked system built on a DFI NF4 Ultra-D board. To date, the DFI board has the most versatile voltage settings available and is the crowning glory for many an overclocker. The DFI settings allow you to juice your RAM up to 4V! That'll do the trick. :) The other tests will be performed on a less extreme system so people without that 4V RAM option (like me for example) will have a better idea of what to expect.
Package
The OCZ RAM came in a simple enough package. Here are a couple shots of the sides of the blister-pack of RAM. The back has the usual promotional quotes from previous OCZ reviews. :)
Specs
Here is the description and specs from the OZ website:
OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 / 400MHz / Gold Edition / Dual Channel
OCZ PC-3200 Gold Edition is the latest addition to the extreme-speed Gold Series family. As part of the award winning OCZ Gold series, PC-3200 Gold is built with leading edge technology designed to provide users with unwavering performance features capable of excelling in even the most demanding computing environments. At DDR400, these modules turn out heart-pounding 2-2-2 timings with flawless performance and stability.
OCZ PC-3200 products are 100% hand-tested to ensure compliance with stringent quality standards. Furthermore, every dual channel kit from OCZ is hand tested as a matched pair across a wide variety of motherboards to ensure seamless performance on most motherboards.
In addition, each member of the OCZ Gold PC-3200 family is encased in a gold layered copper heatspreader for efficient heat dissipation and is backed by an industry-leading lifetime warranty, toll-free technical support and the exclusive EVP® (Extended Voltage Protection) coverage.
With its ultra-fast performance, high quality and reliability, the OCZ PC-3200 Gold edition is a perfect memory upgrade for memory-hungry gaming rigs.
Specs
- 400MHz DDR
- CL 2-2-2-5 1T (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)
- Also available in a 512MB Module
- Unbuffered
- Gold Layered Copper Heatspreader
- Lifetime Warranty
- 2.8 Volts
- 184 Pin DIMM
Special features
- EVP®*
- ULN**
Part Numbers
- 1GB (2x512) D/C Kit - OCZ4001024ELDCGE-K
* OCZ EVP® (Extended Voltage Protection) is a feature that allows performance enthusiasts to use a VDIMM of 3.0V ± 5% without invalidating their OCZ Lifetime Warranty.
OCZ Gold PC-3200 is not recomended for use on legacy nForce 2 platforms.
**ULN (Ultra Low Noise) technology uses various printed circuit board (PCB) techniques to reduce the amount of electrical noise that is present in all high-speed ICs. This results in faster and more stable memory.
The main specs that stick out ot me are the insanely fast 2-2-2-5 1T timings as well as the Lifetime Warranty coupled with OCZ's EVP (Extended Voltage Protection) which means you can juice the bah-jeezus out of these bad boys and not void your warranty!
The RAM
When you first set eyes on these beauties the mirror-polished, gold-layered copper heat spreaders practically poke you in the peepers. :) These are EASILY the sharpest heat spreaders I have personally seen on RAM sticks. The gold layering is shined to a mirror finish and actually looks a bit less yellow than the first pic below. The pic used with a flash next to it is not photo-chopped at all. Those light blings are real. Even the OCZ emblem on the heat spreaders is high quality. So far this is certainly not the type of package you would expect from "budget" sticks of RAM.
Overclocking
I was pretty eager to give this RAM a run when it came to overclocking. Matter of fact, running the RAM at its spec'd speed (200MHz) never even crossed my mind until I realized that I still needed to benchmark it at that speed for this review. :) Since SpikeShot was so kind as to allow me to borrow his rig for testing I was able to give this RAM a run in two different test systems. One with regular voltage options and one with extreme voltage options. The performance section has a chart listing the main gear used in the test setups... Keep on reading.
First off was to see how this RAM works in my main test rig which runs on an Asus A8N SLI Deluxe with an AMD Athlon64 3800+. The max RAM voltage the A8N allows is 3V so that is what I set it to when overclocking the OCZ BH5. Using the usual method of bumping up the FSB by 3 - 5MHz at a time until unstable and then backing off 1MHz at a time until stable I reached a max stable OC of 228MHz at 2-2-2-5 1T timings. Not bad. The Corsair PC3200 XL Pro RAM I tested the OCZ RAM against runs TCCD RAM and was only able to hit 216MHz at those timings.
Next came the REAL test. BH5 has quite a reputation for performing exceptionally well in the overclocking department so long as you can supply it with a sick amount of voltage. To accomplish this you usually need to do one of three things; Use an OCZ Booster (if your motherboard allows), volt-mod your motherboard (very risky and instantly voids your warranty), or use a DFI NForce4 motherboard. My bud SpikeShot had one (as I stated earlier) so I took a quick trip over there and we commenced to "Smack his rig up". :) From previous tweaking and testing he was able to determine that the OCZ PC3200 VX RAM he used had about a max stable overclock of 248MHz at 2-2-2-6 timings. So we set the PC3200 Gold BH5 RAM to the same timings for these tests. Through trial and error we found 258MHz at 3.7V was the best/stable max overclock. Going over 3.7V didn't really seem to help too much. We were able to complete a test here and there at 260MHz but it just couldn't hold it together enough to complete all the tests. I'm not complaining, though. 58MHz is over a 50% performance gain while keeping some seriously tight timings. *starts to think about getting a DFI board*
