Verdict: A poor cousin to G.Skill's high-end DDR2 kits

We hadn't tested any G.Skill memory before this Labs test, so we were eager to see how its DIMMs performed against well-known names such as Corsair and OCZ.

The F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA is G.Skill's most basic 2GB DDR2 kit and is rated as PC2-5400, so it's guaranteed to run at up to 676MHz at sluggish timings of 5 - 5 - 5 - 15. You also won't be able to run it at 676MHz without overclocking your CPU, as most motherboards only support 667MHz (PC2-5300) DDR2 at the stock CPU frequency.

There was less of a performance difference between the kits in the Core 2 test rig than in the Athlon 64 test rig, so, in the latter system, the F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA's low bandwidth and high latency timings counted against it more.

By increasing its voltage to 2.15V, we were able to overclock the F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA from 667MHz to 700MHz as its default latency timings. This is pretty puny, but at least you don't have to drop the latency timings, which would hurt the performance in an Athlon 64 system. Unfortunately, increasing the voltage above 2.15V stopped the PC from POSTing, and when we dropped the timings to 6 - 6 - 6 - 18, the kit wouldn't overclock any further.

The limited overclockability of the F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA makes it a poor choice when other similarly priced kits can be pushed further.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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• SilverStone Raven - Peripherals
• Raptor Gaming M3 Platinum - Peripherals
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 - Processors
• ATI Radeon HD 4670 - Graphics cards
• DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS - Motherboards
• BFG GeForce GTX 260 OCX MaxCore - Graphics cards