Test Setup

As you can see above, the MX Technology Armor kit is fairly tall, which means that you have to double check if they will fit next to your CPU cooler. Our U12P fits just fine next to these.

Performance & Overclocking

The Armor 1600 MHz memory comes with two XMP profiles. One is set at 8-8-8-24, while the other one goes for 7-7-7-24. Team Xtreme mentions that each kit is hand tested. My guess is that both XMP are loaded unto the memory and a test is performed if it can handle one of these profiles, with the successful one being used officially. We will see if it will hold true, as we can simply set the memory to either setting in the mainboard BIOS. Mach Xtreme also sets the system to deliver only 1.6V with both XMP profiles, a bit less than the maximum of 1.65V allowed by Intel.

Upon first setting the kit to the XMP profile #1, running both modules at CL8, everything worked flawlessly. This was not the case with the second profile forcing the pair to boot at CL7. My guess - and it is nothing more than a mere guess - if the memory were to manage CL7 at 1600 MHz, it would be sold as a Black Diamond kit instead. Allow me to side track here for a second, as this brings me to another weird aspect. The Armor series should pack more performance than the Black Diamond series, but Team Xtreme only offers the former with CL8, while the latter is available at CL7. It would make more sense for Mach Xtreme to switch these settings around in my humble opinion.

Setting it back at CL8 with the help of the XMP profile, we managed to push the memory up to 1780 MHz - which is an excellent headroom over its stock speed and by raising it to 1.65V we managed to break the 1800 MHz barrier. This is excellent for those wanting to tickle the most out of the kit, while staying within the specifications set forth by Intel. Pushing it to 1.7V on the other hand, did not help at all while supplying 1.8, 1.9 or 2.0V actually decreased the possible overclock and performance of this kit. We have seen this attribute in other kits as well and it seems justified that memory IC manufacturers are not out to provide chips that perform well with high voltage and memory manufacturers do not have any incentive to offer such kits anymore as well.

The next step - as always - was to find out at what minimum speed the memory would run at tightest timings and 1.5V. The memory did not boot at all with CL5, no matter what voltage was applied. At CL6-6-6-18 it worked at 1333 MHz with 1.6V but no additional headroom, no matter how the voltage was adjusted. CL7 yielded in a range between just under 1400 MHz and 1574 MHz when using voltages between 1.5 and 1.7V, which also shows that the memory simply will not run at the XMP profile #2 - too bad. Once again, raising the voltage higher also resulted in worse performance. Last, but not least the memory was set CL9 and 1.65V, yielding further performance increase to 1886 MHz. While this is great, there are plenty of kits out there, which offer 2000 MHz at CL9.




As you can see in our voltage scaling graph, the memory seems to scale somewhat well up to 1.7 V but drops noticeably with any voltage beyond that. Remember, this only represents our memory kit and you mileage may vary!