G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB DDR4-3600 Review

[Crashman]

With programable RGB LEDs, a high DDR4-3600 data rate, and solid CAS 16 timings, is G.Skill’s latest lighted RAM the best of everything?

G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB DDR4-3600 Review : Read more

 

[drwho1]

Cons:
Expensive
It has Led Color.... should also be a Cons.

 

[g-unit1111]

That price. Ouch. But I would be curious to see how the extra speed is handled in a Ryzen rig vs an Intel i7.

 

[MASOUTH]

"...where G.Skill uses the same letter on other modules to donate the color red."

denote?

 

[Jack_Burton]

It was definitely worth the extra $40 or so dollars I got my sticks for to me. These serve as the only real LED lighting going on in my case other than some other brand badges that light up white on the cooler and vid card. Looks pretty damn sick set to AMD red. Minimal.

 

[Adm1ra1P]

"...where G.Skill uses the same letter on other modules to donate the color red."

denote?

Damn you auto-correct?

 

[BulkZerker]

Anyone winging about the LED lighting needs to grow up.
You can buy sticks without the lighting for less, much less, if not having LEDs is so important to you.

 

[chumly]

@hardware_tom
There are two competing motherboard chipsets right now, and consumers that care as much about the one as the other, you guys should be testing both at this point otherwise you are ignoring the market. You guys planning on testing AMD and Intel separately? Surely the science behind performance would change drastically given a complete change in platform. The results will be worthless to anyone that decides to buy into the other market.

 

[GoldMan27]

That price. Ouch. But I would be curious to see how the extra speed is handled in a Ryzen rig vs an Intel i7.

Same. I'm running a Ryzen 7 1700 with Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4-2800, but I could only imagine how much faster my build would be with that.

Then again, I'm not sure if my board could handle it. ASUS' website says my board (ROG Crosshair VI HERO) can handle up to 64GB DDR4-3200 on OC, so it might not be able to handle the load. Though who am I kidding? I don't have enough money to blow on this just for fancy lights.

 

[g-unit1111]

That price. Ouch. But I would be curious to see how the extra speed is handled in a Ryzen rig vs an Intel i7.

Same. I'm running a Ryzen 7 1700 with Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4-2800, but I could only imagine how much faster my build would be with that.

Then again, I'm not sure if my board could handle it. ASUS' website says my board (ROG Crosshair VI HERO) can handle up to 64GB DDR4-3200 on OC, so it might not be able to handle the load. Though who am I kidding? I don't have enough money to blow on this just for fancy lights.

Yeah same. :lol:

But that is interesting though - even the highest end AM4 boards - the Crosshair VI and the MSI Xpower Titanium - only support max DDR4-3200. I wonder if it's just limitations of the BIOS that could be fixed with a future update or is it limited by the CPU's memory controller or something else?

 

[ravewulf]

A few small corrections to the RGB section:

"and that patterns such as Rainbow will assign various colors to the four LEDs of an individual module."
it's five LEDs per module, not four.

I'm running a dual channel kit on a Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming K5 using static mode and it works (the other ones you cited as not working may also work, but I haven't tested them). The trick is that there's a bug in the software where the LED brightness is turned all the way down by default even though the color wheel shows differently. It's listed under the known issues on the G.Skill forum

There's a bug where the default color has its brightness turned all the way down, even though it shows up as red. So the small circle inside the triangle is not on the lower left corner. And when you change the color by rotating the knob on the color wheel, the brightness value doesn't change. The best way to resolve this (if you are on first install or after clicking on "Default") is to click the red, green, or blue box to the left of the color wheel. Then click the button below the five color group selectors to apply the same color to all groups. After this step, you can move that color wheel to any color you want for any color group without the brightness issue. (Note: The other lighting effects, like comet and flash and dash ignores that brightness value, so that color bug doesn't affect those lighting effects.)

http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?s=e7362d5bdfbea3f1fd8fbcb5cb066d37&t=14257

 

[Crashman]

@hardware_tom
There are two competing motherboard chipsets right now, and consumers that care as much about the one as the other, you guys should be testing both at this point otherwise you are ignoring the market. You guys planning on testing AMD and Intel separately? Surely the science behind performance would change drastically given a complete change in platform. The results will be worthless to anyone that decides to buy into the other market.

1. No.
2. Jacob is working on an AMD memory article. It has a slightly different focus unique to that platform's benefits.
3. Maybe.
4. Probably.

A few small corrections to the RGB section: it's five LEDs per module, not four.

I'm running a dual channel kit on a Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming K5 using static mode and it works (the other ones you cited as not working may also work, but I haven't tested them). The trick is that there's a bug in the software where the LED brightness is turned all the way down by default even though the color wheel shows differently. It's listed under the known issues on the G.Skill forum

There's a bug where the default color has its brightness turned all the way down, even though it shows up as red. So the small circle inside the triangle is not on the lower left corner. And when you change the color by rotating the knob on the color wheel, the brightness value doesn't change. The best way to resolve this (if you are on first install or after clicking on "Default") is to click the red, green, or blue box to the left of the color wheel. Then click the button below the five color group selectors to apply the same color to all groups. After this step, you can move that color wheel to any color you want for any color group without the brightness issue. (Note: The other lighting effects, like comet and flash and dash ignores that brightness value, so that color bug doesn't affect those lighting effects.)

http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?s=e7362d5bdfbea3f1fd8fbcb5cb066d37&t=14257

Thanks. Considering the PITA of the bug, I'll just leave it as "broken" and put an (see comments below for solutions) in the article.

 

[CeltPC]

I am surprised that there is no mention of the design / software flaws of the G.Skill RGB memory modules in this review. The use of controlling software such as G.Skill's or Asus Aura has been corrupting the SPD's for many users. This of course causes major stability issues, and the problem tends to be progressive, getting to the point of being inoperable.

These problems have been well documented on many forums, including the G.Skill forum. At this point G.Skill and Asus have stated they are working on some kind of solution, but until / if that happens, any owner of these modules are putting their sticks at risk if color controlling software is used.

I would advise any owner to run an SPD check for corruption using something like Thaiphoon Burner.

 

[Bsquared]

I, too, am surprised at the cost premium. Didn't Gskill used to stand for quality memory at affordable prices? Are there any cost-effective RGB DIMMs out there?

 

[IceMyth]

Why G.Skill is not benchmarked against Corsair?

 

[Crashman]

Why G.Skill is not benchmarked against Corsair?

Because it was benchmarked against kits with the same number of ranks. The most recently-tested Corsair modules were single-rank two-DIMM kits. It's all explained in the article.

 

[Mike Zimmerman]

Check SPD CRC of your memory modules! I bet you have corrupted it.

 

[csdani84]

The quick math calculation on latency seems to be wrong.
It says "3200/16*7=1575". It is rather 3600/16*7=1575. And it means it is a bit slower than DDR3-1600 CAS 7, since its speed equals a theoretical DDR3-1575 CAS 7. Or see the other way around: 1600/7*16=3657 and some, so the DDR3 would equal a theoretical DDR4-3657 CAS 16 regarding CAS latencies.

 

[nbrikha]

So, just no point on testing RAM on an AMD rig?

 

[Nintendork]

They should be testing on Ryzen only and ditch intel for good. Ryzen is an arch that actually benefits from fast ram, perfect excuse for high speed memory as a reviewer.

 

[Crashman]

They should be testing on Ryzen only and ditch intel for good. Ryzen is an arch that actually benefits from fast ram, perfect excuse for high speed memory as a reviewer.

So you have an AMD platform that will test DDR4-4200 at full data rate? That's excellent, please send it

The focus of these articles is to see how far the memory can be pushed. If you want to see how much performance can be had without pushing the limits of the memory, our AMD guy has an article in the works for you. And then you'll see two types of memory articles, CPU focused and memory focused. And the memory focused one will still use whatever platform supports the highest data rate.

Now I get that people have grown impatient waiting for the AMD article, but the guy working on it is a true enthusiast with a full-time job elsewhere. I'm not going to push him to rush out a half-hearted article, and I'm not going to stress him to the point where he gives up and sells the late article to another publisher. I'm going to be nice to the guy and allow him the time he needs to complete the article to his own satisfaction, because he deserves that consideration.

 

[cats_Paw]

Soon we will see PSU cables with leds... actually, I better not give them any ideas.

 

[KaiserPhantasma]

How did asus became the "RGB standard"? with their "aura certification"?

 

[Crashman]

How did asus became the "RGB standard"? with their "aura certification"?

LOL, Asus had the software, the firmware team, and the user support to push G.Skill in that direction. G.Skill on the other hand has the market support to push back with its own version of the software. So, it's basically a limited partnership pushed by buyers other than you or me.

 

[CRO5513Y]

My oh my, how far aesthetics have come. What's next an RGB Power Supply? Oh wait...

In all seriousness though, definitely the best looking RGB RAM kit imo. The Vengeance RGB is also nice but that metal finish on the Trident-Z heatsink just takes the cake.