Storage

Memory: Corsair Dominator CM2X1024-8500C5D and OCZ Titanium PC2 8500

When it comes to high-end memory modules, Corsair and OCZ are widely considered to be the two top memory manufacturers by many. Certainly both companies are among the most popular manufacturers used in most enthusiasts machines.

Both manufacturers provide a lifetime warranty on their memory modules and both are known for delivering memory modules that often scale well beyond their officially rated speeds. This makes them ideal for the overclocking crowd.

AMD sent over two 1GB OCZ Titanium PC2 8500 modules, and two 1GB Corsair Dominator modules. These modules are rated for speeds up to 1066MHz and are designed to run at speeds of 5-5-5-15 at that speed with 2.1V of voltage.

The Dominator modules ship with massive heatsinks, this is their most distinguishing feature. Heat from the memory chips is transferred from the RAM to the air via these black aluminum heatsinks. Corsair uses very long fins to increase the surface area of the heatsink. Resting underneath this heatsink is a second, smaller heatsink which is responsible for cooling the PCB of the memory module. This silver heatsink is also made from aluminum and is dedicated solely for cooling the PCB.

OCZ’s Titanum series memory modules are also known for their cooling. OCZ outfits their Titanium modules with special XTC heatspreaders. Rather than relying on a conventional aluminum plate like that used on many enthusiast modules, the plate on the XTC heatspreader consists of dozens of tiny holes. This honeycomb design helps to improve airflow and thus helps the memory module run slightly cooler.

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB

For handling storage tasks AMD sent over a 500GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 hard drive. The Caviar SE16 supports perpendicular storage. By storing bits in a vertical, or perpendicular, arrangement, drive capacity is increased, ushering in the first terabyte hard drives. The SE16 features a 16MB cache and 7200 RPM spindle speed.

According to WD, seek time as low as 8.9ms for reads, and 10.9ms for writes, with an average rotational latency of 4.2ms.

The SE16 isn’t quite as speedy as WD’s latest Black series hard drives, but in its day it was a pretty good performer for a large capacity HDD. Today the drive is known for its price/performance: the 500GB drive can be found on Newegg today for just $69.99.

LG GH20NS10 Super Multi DVD Rewriter

Arguably the most distinguishing feature of LG’s GH20NS10 is its Serial ATA interface, making it easier to install with less cable clutter. The drive also supports CD read speeds up to 48x, and DVD read speeds up to 16x, while write speeds are up to 48x for CDs and 20x for DVD-RAM, 12x DVD-R, and 8x for DVD-RW.