Mushkin Redline DDR4-2666 Memory Review

TECHNOLOGY X TESTING PROTOCOL

At Technology X, we test our RAM slightly different depending upon the product’s marketed purpose, whether it be an entry-level budget kit or a high-end enthusiast level kit.  Our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, however, CPU C State alteration may or may not have occurred depending on the motherboard and BIOS configurations. Additionally, we also try to include links to the benchmarks used in our report so that you as the reader can replicate our tests to confirm that your system performs the way it should

TECHNOLOGY X TEST BENCH

All of the components we use for testing are standard off-the-shelf PC components from major manufacturers, which can be purchased at a variety local retailers and online. We’ll also provide links to our components for those of you that find an interest in our equipment.

We’d like to thank Intel and ASRock for providing vital components in this test bench, without which this report would not be possible. Check out our review of the Intel Core i7 5960X and the ASRock X99 OC Formula used in this report.

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

To test our RAM we’ll use a variety of benchmarking tools and productivity applications including AIDA64, Cinebench R15, WinRAR, 7-Zip, Photoshop CC, and Handbrake. We’ll also do some gaming tests using FRAPS to measure FPS performance.

OVERCLOCKING AND LATENCY TUNING

To test our RAM, we’ll be doing some overclocking and latency tuning to see what the best settings we can run the RAM at outside of its guaranteed rating of 2666MHz memory speed and 15-15-15-35 timings. However, before we start tuning, we’ll run a memory benchmark using AIDA64 to get a performance baseline.

So now that we’ve got that out-of-the-way, we’ll start tuning and overclocking our memory. After some tweaking, we were able to get some fairly good results, however we were unable to successfully overclock our memory past its rated speeds of 2666MHz. That being said, with a little bit of voltage adjustment we were able to get our timings significantly lower, and even hit our lowest yet of 12-12-12-32, at 2133MHz. We increased the voltage from the stock 1.200v, to 1.220v.

Here are the best timings we got at each speed we tested the memory at:

So not too bad, all things considered. We do wish we could have gotten the RAM to run stable at 3,000MHz, or even 2,800MHz. Sadly, these are the breaks of memory overclocking.