Test System

Testing Rated Speeds

Past memory reviews from me have featured a non-overclocked system, but I know that most of us tend to overclock our CPUs. In order to provide you with the same sort of results you will get in the end, and to test memory kits under such overclocked CPU loads, I have overclocked my new memory testing system to match the speeds of Intel's i7-6700K, which defaults to a 4.2 GHz Turbo clock. Most of my Z170-based memory reviews do have that "stock" 4.3 GHz turbo speed in use, although the ASUS board I used for those reviews does set the CPU to 4.2 GHz on all cores, which I matched with my retail i7-6950X CPU with relative ease. Intel's Broadwell-E CPUs with high core counts do not clock up very easily; pushing more than 4.3 GHz with this CPU is harder than I'd like, so 4.2 GHz makes for an easy overclock through all ten CPU cores. I also use a 3300 MHz ring speed for all testing, and the two combined overclocks make for a decent performance boost over a stock-clocked i7-6950X CPU while still providing a decent thermal profile.


I had zero problems with getting my test system up and running with Crucial's Ballistix Elite modules. The 3200 MHz divider works just fine on my Intel Core i7-6950X CPU, so it was just a matter of going into the BIOS and enabling XMP in order to get these sticks to run at their specified speed.