Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
You can frown and raise your eye-browses over everything RGB these days, however for me personally it seems to work on DDR4 memory. It offers nice aesthetics and let's be honest here, you can go wild, but also a single color all static. All that animation activity is not for everybody, if you have a nice black/red theme going on in your PC then how cool would it be to only use the RED LEDs with a bit of a breathing effect or something. Configurable is the most important aspect here. Currently the T-Force Night Hawk RGB DIMMs only are supported by ASUS, albeit not the most user-friendly software it does work well. From earlier talks with Teamgroup, other motherboard partners are talked with to get the configuration options supported. And that is a pretty significant thing. So in default you'll get the best animated mode, the slowly changing rainbow colors, with an AURA Sync compatible motherboard and the software, the sky is the limit of course. We discussed that many times already, extremely fast clocked memory helps, but it is just a tiny little bit on intel platforms. With Ryzen ~3,000 MHz is that sweet spot (albeit I did not test this kit just yet on a Ryzen platform TBH). More memory over faster memory is preferred. In quad-channel where you have so much memory bandwidth already that reasoning should be applied, you could easily go for a lower clocked MHz kit if it comes available as well. In dual-channel however faster clocked memory can make a little more sense, but comes at added cost.
LEDs
The reality though is that this release is all about the RGB LEDs. The trend is on-going, we've seen many poorly designed solutions and implementations, Teamgroup however is doing things right, this memory looks anything short from amazing. Personally I am not a fan of the White color heat-spreader, but a black model is available as well. Next to that it can be configured to animations and colors of your liking.
Next to the LED activity the new Teamgroup T-Force Night Hawk RGB DDR4 DIMMs simply is a proper DDR4 memory series as well. At 3,000 MHz you have nice bandwidth / performance, frequency and then you combine it with the tasty and daunting aesthetic looks. So yes, this memory just looks great. Our kit does so with a what is considered normal latency timings (CL16) and a 1.35 Voltage. Obviously the kit tested today is targeted at the latest series Z170/Z270/X299 Intel motherboard solutions that allow 3,000 MHz on that memory. Overclocking wise we fooled around with it a little and you will be limited alright, changing CL 16 over 3,200 MHz for example results into crashes. So if you are not an uber enthusiast pro-overclocker, your best bet is to simply use the XMP configured timings. I mean, at the XMP default (for this kit) you can already run 3,000 MHz.
Conclusion
Teamgroup has a nice memory kit offering here at hand with that new RGB functionality. We love that there are no wires or cables involved, it's all signal processing over the SMbus. That has one downside, configuration changes currently are only supported by AURA SYNC, and that is tied to specific motherboards. In due time other motherboards should support the memory as well though. The memory itself is fast and runs stable. Yes, RGB enabled DIMMs will be a more expensive then your average 2,133 MHz memory modules. It depends greatly on your preferred memory frequency though, a 2,133 MHz 2 x 8GB kit can go from as low as 7 euro per GB, the RGB version as shown today would cost roughly three euro per GB more. DRAM prices are going up and down a lot at the moment due to shortages, making it more expensive then needed really. For your money you receive DIMMs with a proper lifetime warranty and that configurable RGB system. Should you ever change your motherboard that has a green theme instead of a red color theme, hey you can switch your DIMMs RGB LEDs to match, and that is the beauty of it. The kit is easy to configure over SPD XMP profiles and give a nice feel in quality. And hey, these DIMMs kick in perfectly on AMD Ryzen PCs as well at 2933 MHz, nice. Definitely recommended.
- Sign up to receive a notice when we publish a new article
- Or go back to Guru3D's front page
