G.Skill RipJaws X DDR3-2133 4GB Review

When it comes to performance ram designed specifically for the enthusiast market, G.Skill is one brand name that’s amongst the industry leaders. The Taiwanese company is also prevalent in providing high-end laptop memories as well as SSDs. However, today I’ll be looking at what G.Skill excels at, making high-end ram. As such, today’s review is for the RipJaws X DDR3-2133 (aka PC3-17000) 4GB memory kit.

G.Skill says that this memory kit is “designed for 2^nd generation Intel Core processors and P67 platforms” and I happily obliged with our Gigabyte P67A-UD7 motherboard and Core i7-2600K CPU. Although, I’m sure this memory kit will work mighty fine on existing dual-channel LGA-1156 boards as well as H67 and H61 boards as well.

Now looking at the RipJaws X, this 4GB kit has a rather low profile compared to the Kinston HyperX ram modules. In other words, it’s just a standard sized ram module with sensibly sized heat spreaders on top. Of course, you can go ultra-hardcore and add their Turbulence II fan on top of these for extra cooling. In fact, many of their faster kits are actually sold with the fan rather than simply being an option.

G.Skill rates these RipJaws X DDS3-2133 at CL 9-11-9-28-2N @ 1.6v. It’s important to note that G.Skill guarantees these speeds with only two DIMMs, i.e. an 8 GB solution with 4x 2GB sticks will not give you these speeds. Thankfully G.Skill sells this kit with a 2x 4GB configuration as well.

Prior to the RipJaws X, the Kingmax NANO DDR3-2200 as well as the Kingston HyperX DDR3-2133 would boot up with 1333MHz speeds. This time though, the Gigabyte P67A-UD7 immediately picked up the RipJaws X at 1600MHz by default. At its default speed the RipJaws X reported CAS Latency of 9-9-9-28, running at the default voltage of 1.5v on the motherboard.

For overclocking, or rather running the RipJaws X DDR-2133 at their rated speed, I quickly changed the setting in the BIOS, with the XMP giving me only one profile of 2133MHz; obviously since the RipJaws X were already running at 1600MHz by default.

As with the Kingston HyperX and the Kingmax NANO before it, I couldn’t run the RipJaws X at the rated voltage. While the former two were rated at 1.65v, I could only get them to boot at 1.8v and above. Meanwhile the RipJaws X booted up perfectly fine at 1.66v (rated at 1.6v)!