Over the past few months, OCZ Technology has been growing from stregth to strength. This is evident with the aquisition of PC Power, makers of PSUs and PC accessories. So now, OCZ Technology not only make high quality, high-end memory products, they also have a sub-siduaries producing PSUs and other PC components for them. Good news for the consumer ... but bad news for their competition.

OCZ Technology knows the enthusiast market very well. They've been producing some of the world's fastest memory available. Most of their memory modules, not only looks good, but performs just as well ... being highly overclockable, they are among the few choices enthusiasts would go for.

With high performace ram, the need for an effective cooling solution is also needed. And in recent months, OCZ has come up with some innovative designs in cooling their memory modules. Their patented XTC heatspreaders can be found on all of their memory products. Now, they've introduced something very different ... heat-pipe cooling on memory modules.

       

In this review we'll be taking a look at the DDR2 PC2-6400 Reaper HPC Edition 2Gb Kit from OCZ. These modules are rated at DDR2-800, PC2-6400 spec with low latency memory timings of 4-4-4-15. They're equipped with a new innovative cooling feature called Heat-Pipe Conduit (HPC), which draws heat away from the heatspreaders ... the same sort of effect you'll get on heat-pipe cooling found on high-end motherboards for chipsets.

When I first heard about DDR2 memory, I was pretty confused how they class and labelled them. OK, I'll try and give you some DDR2 terminology ... More information can be found HERE.

• PC2-4200 : DDR2-533 : 133FSB : 266Mhz
• PC2-5300 : DDR2-667 : 166FSB : 333Mhz
• PC2-6400 : DDR2-800 : 200FSB : 400Mhz
• PC2-8000 : DDR2-1000 : 250FSB : 500Mhz
• PC2-8500 : DDR2-1066 : 266FSB : 533Mhz
• PC2-9200 : DDR2-1133: 283FSB : 566Mhz **
• PC2-10000 : DDR2-1200 : 300FSB : 600Mhz **

** Unofficial DDR2 specifications

These memory modules come with EPP as standard, so with a correctly matched motherboard that offer EPP support (mostly SLI-Ready motherboards), you'll get better overall performance and there's no need to manually configure memory settings in the BIOS.

OCZ have already released their PC2-8500 and PC2-9200 versions in their Reaper HPC series, which I think is great news ... it gives the enthusaists more choice for their high spec'd rigs.

       

I don't expect to get a great overclocking result with these modules ... probably be able to push them to 500Mhz (DDR2-1000 spec). What's moe important is how well they perform at default speed. Let's take a closer look and found out for ourselves ...