Busting The Remaining Barriers
What do you call half of the legendary DDR3-2200 quad-channel 16 GB kit that G.Skill sent for our motherboard testing? G.Skill calls it F3-17600CL9D-8GBXLD, with two 4 GB modules making up our desired 8 GB configuration.
We chose these modules specifically to overcome any and all overclocking limitations, even though we know that performance gains over low-cost DDR3-1600 are minimal.
At $110, there’s absolutely no doubt that Seasonic’s SS-85HT is a value-oriented or even a low-cost part. And yet, it’s still capable of cranking out 80 A across two 12 V rails. We saw the feedback on $2000 System Builder Marathon configuration, where some folks suggested that this unit might have been the cause of its poor overclocking, and one of the reasons we kept it here was to put those rumors to rest. The only two things that cheapen this part are its lack of removable cables and its unpainted steel shell (though we could have spent nearly twice as much to get a full-featured part with the added benefit of 3% greater efficiency).
One such full-featured part would have been Seasonic’s own X850. We didn’t have one, but we did have our trusty X760 handy, and decided to use it for further evaluation.