G.Skill Sniper SR2 8GB Kit Review

Conclusion

So is the Sniper SR2 all show and no go? Absolutely not.

It’s actually a great demonstration of how if you haven’t got the money to splash out on super high-end hardware you don’t have to compromise either looks or performance.

Let’s start with the looks. Normally a sensibly priced RAM kit will be a basic heat-spreader with perhaps a sticker on it to show who made it. Here G.Skill have given us a unique design that looks way beyond the £90 they’re asking. The matt black finish is gorgeous and will match almost any board you think of. There is no denying it would be epic in a Gigabyte Assassin. The only minor niggle is how pointy the replica iron sights at each end of stick are, but the looks outweigh having to remember to push in the middle when inserting.

Performance is surprisingly good considering our sub-£100 outlay has given us 8GB of DDR3 to play with. Although the kit doesn’t overclock that’s more of a fault of the way Sandybridge overclocks memory than the kit itself. Timings are reasonable at 9-9-9-24-2T and our testing showed that whilst this isn’t a blazing kit, it’s speedy enough for most uses.

The most important element is that the kit today, in SR2 guise, only takes 1.25v to obtain the timings and speed. That’s flipping amazing stuff and kudos to G.Skill for getting the voltage so low but not dropping the speed to 1333MHz.

So all in all it’s a great looking kit, big on capacity, low on voltage and excellent value for money. As long as you don’t expect it to be the basis of an absolute lunatic system you could do a hell of a lot worse.Performance is pretty good considering we’re running at 1600MHz CAS9 but the 1.25v and 8GB capacity nicely balance it all out.

We’re happy to award the G.Skill Sniper SR2 our OC3D Silver Award.

  

Thanks to G.Skill for providing the Sniper SR2 for review. Discuss in our Forums.