PQI is no stranger when it comes to memory making. The company merged with PMI in hopes to achieve their strong goals. They've entered the enthusiast market not too long ago and have been making strong impressions throughout the community. PQI's DDR2 memory comes with a mirrored black finish while their DDR line features 4 different colors-platinum, mirrored black, gunmetal, and gold. The mirrored black heatspreaders are a little different from the standard that we're used to seeing these days. It comes with one giant clip instead of two.
The clip holds on strong, preventing users from removing it and voiding the warranty. The mirrored finish does look awesome though.
PQI sent us their PC2-4200 which is rated to run 266MHz at 3-3-3-8 but required a high 2.0v, or so it says on their website. 2.0v is perfectly fine for every day use but does seem a bit high for memory that only runs at 266MHz. However throughout testing, the memory did fine with just 1.8v. The highest I used was 1.9v to reach high frequencies.
The PQI was able to go as low as 3-3-2-6 at 266MHz. This rivals the offerings from Corsair and Kingston. Like the Mushkin, I started slowly and eventually was able to run 337MHz with 4-4-4-12. This is still with just 1.8v. I figured that all these memory were hitting the motherboard limit so I might as well just jump the gun and try for the highest. Sure enough, the PQI reached it without a problem. With 1.9v and latencies of 4-4-4-12, 354MHz was reached. The overclocking results were exactly the same as the Corsair, which is quite interesting.
- 266MHz 3-3-2-6
- 337MHz 4-4-4-12
- 354MHz 4-4-4-12
