GeIL Black Dragon Dual Channel 4GB DDR3 Kit Review

👤by David Mitchelson Comments 📅03-11-10
Conclusion

The Black Dragon series from GeIL is good performing kit, out of the box there is some pleasing performance to be had especially if you are going to use these modules primarily for gaming. With the Black Dragon modules having no heatspreader, there is little to no worry about physical compatibility with CPU heatsinks. GeIL have dressed the modules with a lovely black PCB and splashed golden accents all over to give this kit a striking appearance.

Sadly though the overclocking is below par. As discussed in the overclocking section, this kit has big problems with 1156 and AM3 boards. This isn't a one off or a bad coincidence either because this is the second kit that has been sent and as I identified, there are others who have reported this problem too. The Black Dragon 1600MHz Dual Channel kit would not nudge over 1600MHz regardless of various parameters being altered such as voltage or DRAM timings. Removing this kit from the 890FX board and slotting it into the triple channel ASUS Rampage III Formula (which is X58) highlights that the issue is with the chipset, because the kit responded well to the X58 board allowing me to overclock all the way to 2000MHz.



This kit can be bought for around £70. If you are thinking about buying a Black Dragon DDR3 kit be sure to keep in mind that this problem is present and you may be stuck at the stock performance which although constraining is fairly reasonable.

Pros
+ Good performance
+ Attractive styling
+ Low profile
+ DBT tested

Cons
- Poor chipset compatibility
- Will not overclock on Intel 1156 or AMD 890





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