OCZ Flex II 4GB PC2-9200 DDR2 Memory Review

Conclusion

The OCZ PC2-9200 Flex II 4GB memory kit steps up the game for 4GB memory kits. No longer does 4GB have to be associated with slow and loose timings. Focusing solely at the performance available, this kit really does give you the flexibility to choose between tight timings or high frequencies with appreciable read, write, and copy bandwidth across the board. Factor in the overclocking, Extended Voltage Protection, and the Xtreme Liquid Convection heatsink and you’ve got a well rounded memory kit.

In addition to their Extended Voltage Protection, OCZ covers these sticks with their Lifetime warranty. This warranty is valid so long as the heatspreaders aren’t removed and the sticks haven’t been tampered with. The use of aluminum for the waterblocks does concern me and while I doubt you’d have these sticks in a system long enough for them to corrode, this could still be an issue down the road.

Using just a fan to cool the modules resulted in some modest overclocks. There is no doubt that these sticks are platform limited as the 780i I was using had no tRD or TRFC controls and might have set these timings too tight for 1200+MHz. Just looking at the scaling between CAS3, CAS4, and CAS5, you can see that CAS5 is your best option if your board can hit those memory speeds. Pushing the voltage above the rated 2.10v to 2.3v didn’t yield any additional frequency scaling, further indicating the platform as the bottleneck.

When it comes to pricing the OCZ Flex II 4GB PC2-9200 memory kit can be found for $199 plus shipping, which makes it $100 less expensive than the Corsair DOMINATOR PC2-9136 kit, which is $299 plus shipping. Not bad considering both kits are rated with CL 5-5-5 timings, but remember the OCZ kit is rated at 1150MHz and the Corsair kit is rated at 1142MHz. The hybrid water and passive cooling heat spreaders that make up the Flex II design are a nice touch and will work great if you ever add a water cooler down the road.

Legit Bottom Line: This flexible kit lives up to it’s name in all aspects. Out of the box the OCZ DDR2 PC2-9200 Flex II 4GB memory kit works great with few adjustments to the BIOS and has great potential for those RAM tweakers out there.