Patriot Sector 5 2400MHz

Patriot Sector 5 2,400MHz review

Remember the days when 400MHz DDR memory seemed impossibly exotic? Fast forward to 2010, add another 2,000MHz and welcome to the state of the art in the form of the Patriot Sector 5 2400MHz triple-channel DDR3 kit. In fact, even today a claimed clockspeed of 2,400MHz is undeniably exceptional. But is it worth paying over £200 for? For that matter, is it actually achievable?The answer to the second question is a little tricky. One of the key barriers to hitting 2,400MHz has nothing to do with the memory itself. Instead, it's the integrated memory controller in Intel's LGA 1156 chipsets. Unlike the upscale 1366 stuff, the memory dividers top out at 12. That means the maximum frequency on offer without overclocking is 1,600MHz.The knock-on effect is that you'll need to run the baseclock at 200MHz to nail that 2,400MHz memory clock. That's a fair old lick by any metric, and stresses other parts of the platform, including the QPI link.To cut a long story short, in testing with our Gigabyte P55 board and Intel Core i7 860-processor, 2,400MHz is not possible with the Patriot Sector 5 kit. In fact, the best we managed was 2,000MHz.