G.Skill DDR3-1600 CL7 6GB PI Series DDR3 Memory Kit Review

Packaging and Heatspreaders

G.Skill has stuffed their PI Series into an easily opened plastic clamshell packaging with some easy to open tabs. Nothing spectacular here — it gets the job done and doesn’t destroy your fingers.

Since this is a 6GB kit there are three 2GB modules. For those of you who are curious, the sticks are roughly 2.25″ tall from the gold fingers to the top of the heatspreaders.

Since I have such terrible luck removing heatspreaders I can’t peek underneath and get a look at the ICs on the actual PCB. That being said, I did notice something familiar.

On top I have the 1600C7 ECO Series we reviewed a few weeks back. On bottom are the 1600C7 PI Series we are reviewing today. Anything look familiar?

How about now? Looks to me like G.Skill is using the same PCB’s on both of these memory kits as both use part number ST-SG38U816 v1.0. There’s no foul play in this but it does mean that perhaps these sticks can also run DDR3-1600C7 with only 1.35vdimm. Then again, just because the PCB is the same doesn’t mean the ICs are the same or that the SPD settings are identical.

Above you can see that the sticks are rated for DDR3-1600 7-8-7-24 with 1.5vdimm.

Just in case you were confused as to which kit is on the table today, G.Skill makes it quite clear.