A Closer Look
The G.Skill PIS Series is a sharp-looking memory module, matte black in color with deep blue graphics. G.Skill used a typical green PCB that does clash a little with the blue graphics.
I have had at least a dozen different memory kits with different styles of heatspreaders above and beyond the typical style, most having various styles of fins or pin-fins designed as part of the heatspreaders. A few others had fins attached with screws or adhesive. The G.Skill PIS Series heatspreader is of the former design, built of heavy aluminum with a hollow area protruding above the PCB with slits for maximum air movement. There are additional extrusions on the sides of the heatspreaders for extra cooling.
The memory is tested to run at DDR3-2400 at timings of 9-11-9-28, with Intel’s required VDIMM of 1.65v. The G.Skill kit is the only DDR3-2400 4GB kit listed at my favorite online retailer. Actually, G.Skill also has the only DDR3-2300, one of two DDR3-2200 kits, and the only DDR3-2100 (PC3-17066) listed there too. Kind of odd actually, seems that the “household name” companies would have taken DDR3 far beyond DDR-2000 by now.
Included with this kit (and all the others I mentioned in the last paragraph for that matter), G.Skill has included a very nice fan for actively cooling the memory kit. They call it “Turbulence Fan”. The frame is made of a surprisingly heavy plastic material, and the gray highlight is made of a soft rubber, I assume for sound deadening. The frame is of very high quality and is very impressive. I have owned a couple of other memory module cooling setups, and although they were both made of aluminum, this one blows both of them away.
The frame locks on the sides of the memory after installing the memory in a motherboard, there is a soft rubber material that will be touching the memory modules, again I would imagine to prevent transmitting vibration from the fan to the memory modules.
