Kingston DDR3 RAM cracks 3Gtransfers/sec barrier, achieves 3.068 Gtransfers/sec amid clouds of supercooled nitrogen

Mix liquid nitrogen and Kingston’s HyperX DDR3-2333 SDRAM modules and you get 3068 Mtransfers per second (DDR3-3068). That’s what Benjamin “Benji Tshi” Bioux and Jean-Baptiste “marmot” Gerard demonstrated to a packed room full of gamers on August 21 at the recent Gamescon event held in Cologne, Germany (as reported by Softpedia). Boosting SDRAM transfer rates using liquid nitrogen to cool semiconductors below 77K (− 196 °C) isn’t a particularly new stunt but pushing DDR3 SDRAM beyond the 3-Gtransfers/sec barrier is. Most of the liquid nitrogen is needed to fill the cooling tower atop the Intel Core i7-870 processor so that the processor could run at 4347.39MHz--a feat in and of itself. However, in the video (included below) you can see appreciably thick amounts of frost covering the DDR3 SDRAM modules as well. They are cold!

(Note: Although the “mission accomplished” sign atop the cooling tower in the Kingston video below says "3068MHz," the actual DDR memory clock is running at 1532 MHz, as shown in a screen shot within the video. However, DDR SDRAM transfers data on both clock edges, so the transfer rate is indeed 3068 Mtransfers/sec or 3.068 Gtransfers/sec.)