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Overclocking

I initially had difficulty getting the OCZ Flex XLC PC2-9200 running at even 1110-5-5-5-18 on the memory testbed I normally use these days - the ASUS P5W DH with a QX6700 - however when I tried it on an Asus P5B-E at OCZ's suggestion, things started going much better.

As a matter of fact, things went so well that I blew past the official PC9200 rating of the memory!

How does PC10000 strike you?

That's right, the memory ran at a full 1250MHz at 5-5-5-18 on the Asus P5B-E without even hooking up the watercooling. I was very impressed.

That's the good news.

I then revisited the P5W DH, and managed to get the OCZ PC2-9200 running at up to 1173-5-5-5-18 on it - 23MHz better than spec - but it would not go past that. As a matter of fact, when I tried to update the P5W-DH BIOS to the latest version as of February 2007, it would no longer even hit 1173MHz any longer - long time readers of my RAM articles will recall that on occasions past I had mentioned that sometimes newer BIOSes can in fact impede overclocking results with LOWER headroom.

So the bad news is... not all motherboards will be able to hit 1150-5-5-5-18 with the OCZ PC2-9200.

Would the water cooled heatsink make a difference? Or is it just a marketing device? We won't know for sure until we get a chance to try it. This is literally the first ever memory product we've ever heard of that has a watercooling option right out of the box.  Maybe something like this is just for bragging rights, and that's why nobody else has come up with this, but regardless you can't deny the fact that this module looks very cool, and would look even better hooked up to your water cooling setup.  Quite frankly, we don't think water cooling is necessary for these modules - they ran fine at up to 1251MHz on the P5B-E - realistically, it is not likely that they can push much further even with water cooling - 1300MHz may be possible, but I don't think much beyond that and even that number is highly speculative.

Conclusion

The OCZ Flex XLC PC2-9200 certainly qualifies as high performance memory - however if you really need to run it at PC2-9200 (1150MHz) we suggest you pair it with one of the boards that have either been tested by other reviewers, users, or OCZ themselves.  We asked OCZ and they confirmed that right now they've successfully tested the RAM to hit spec'd speeds on an Asus P5N32-E, Asus P5B Deluxe (we used an Asus P5B-E), Asus' Striker board, and the EVGA 680i board. If I had to guess, most high recent high end Socket 775 motherboards should be able to handle it, however they may require a BIOS update.

If you can't run at 1150-5-5-5-18, just run it at 4-4-4-12 timing at up to 1083MHz - you will find that 1083-4-4-4-12 will handily outperform 1150-5-5-5-18 in almost every situation. Sometimes, more MHz is NOT better. Why? Because the FSB cripples Intel designs.

OCZ did an excellent job on the PC2-9200, it ran at up to 1250MHz without even water cooling!  These are simply insane speeds that far exceed any spec that you would have believed even half a year ago.  The natural comparison of the Flex XLC would be Corsair's high performance Dominator series.  If OCZ was going for a "bigger is better" approach, then they certainly came out on top.  The giant OCZ XLC heatspreaders "out-dominate" the Corsair Dominator's impressive looks, and the PC2-9200 out-overclock the XMS2's too.