The first thing you notice when you get your hands on a set of OCZ’s finest DDR2 is how much it weighs. This FlexXLC RAM is the heaviest I have ever seen. The next thing you notice is the shiny copper and aluminum heatsink that has tall fins on top to dissipate heat and ¼” inner diameter hose barbs so you can liquid cool the RAM if you want. OCZ says that you can get very close to the same performance on air as you can running liquid on the modules.

The PCB of this ram is an 8-layer design with thermal conductive power and ground planes to channel heat away from the ICs and keep signal integrity for highest performance. Basically the FlexXLC is designed from the PCB up to keep its cool for some serious overclocking. OCZ also gifted the FlexXLC with its EVP which means you can run the RAM at up to + or – VDIMM of 2.4V and still keep the fantastic OCZ lifetime warranty meaning you can overclock this RAM even more without fearing the loss of your warranty.

OCZ rates the FlexXLC to run at 1150 MHz with CL 5-5-5-18 timings on 2.35 V. When I plugged the RAM into my EVGA nForce 680i mainboard and turned the SLI memory config in bios to Max OC I ended up running exactly1148.2 MHz with tighter timings than OCZ promised of CL 5-5-5-15 at the prescribed 2.35 V. The FlexXLC was dead stabile at these settings and I used Sandra to run memory bandwidth tests on the RAM and ended up with RAM Bandwidth Int Buff iSSe2 of 5696 MB/s and a RAM Bandwidth Float Buff’c iSSE2 of 5694.

Typically I don’t go for overclocking my computer components, but I decided to see if I could squeeze more performance out of the Flex XLC. At the default voltage settings I was able to get to 5-5-5-15 on the timings before the system was unstable. Moving back to the 5-5-5-15 timings I was able to get the FlexXLC to run at 1219 MHz stabile at 2.4V. On my system anything higher speed than that wouldn’t boot and if it would I got BSOD as soon as Windows tried to load up. At the 1219 MHz speed performance was virtually identical to the stock speeds with a mere few more points per bandwidth score as compared to the stock Sandra memory bandwidth benchmark.

Moving up to the OCZ quoted timings of 5-5-5-18 I still didn’t fare any better with overclocking above the FlexXLC above 1219 MHz on my test system. So what I ended up seeing was a 6.2% overclock from the stock settings with tighter timings than OCZ promised. Sure I hoped to hit 1300 MHz like some other sites did with similar test machines than mine, but OCZ delivered on more than they promised with the FlexXLC RAM. If you simply want a fantastic set of RAM that will run full speed on a 680i or similar enthusiast mainboard OCZ has a fantastic performer on their hands with the FlexXLC and if you are so inclined you can get great overclocks on the RAM as well.