Up Close & Personal

OCZ has been known for style and looks and these bad boys are stylin! The new Xtreme Thermal Convection heat spreader is laid in what looks like 24k gold! No it's not plated in actual gold, but one could be easily fooled. The golden mirror finish looks amazing against the honeycomb thermal convection grid and mirrors everything you reflect into it. It really looks kick ass!

What catches our eye is the big "Z" in the middle of the XTC heat spreader. With this OCZ really makes his memory recognisable to the public. This is not what we are used to see from OCZ on their Gold memory series. The Gold Series came actually with a solid closed heat spreader covering the full PCB. With the XTC Gold series all this is changing to results in a more advanced cooling method.

The top of the memory modules is open, which is rather strange. For almost all other OCZ modules this is not the case. Both front and back heat spreader are wrapped around the entire PCB and the top of the module is completely covered. On the XTC modules OCZ has opted for a different way forward.

On each of the OCZ memory modules you will find the clear and informative OCZ Technology sticker. This will detail the specifications, timings and part number of the memory and features the stylish OCZ logo. And of course when removed the warranty of it will be voided. I personally would like to see these standard big bulky labels 86'd for something newer. Ram standards may have gone up but the label technology seems to have haulted since the 80's. Hehe I would think the convection process would be more efficient with the labels off.

This heat spreader is awesome looking! I can't stress that enough. The XTC (Xtreme Thermal Convection) heatspreaders appear to be two layers which are compounded to the IC's as there is no retaining clips or mechanism of any kind. The honeycomb grill looks like a stainless finish which are satin steel in color and are directly attached to the IC with a type of thermal tape compound. Next page will show an up close shot of the XTC honeycomb hideout, er grill... ;-)