Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words

Team Group's  T-Force DarkZα DDR4 memory dies is no thrills and no fuzz offering drop incompatibility at a fair price. As you have been able to see, the performance difference among all kits is extremely small overall, you can argue that tighter timing in gaming does help a bit in the more CPU bound situations, nothing dramatic though. Overall we feel that Team Group offers a nice DDR4 memory series with the 3600 MHz kit as tested. However, personally I'd opt the 3200 MHz CL14 version of this kit, as stated, lower latency memory helps Ryzen compared towards higher frequency DDR4 with higher timing and this kit falls into that category, as CL18-22-22-42 really isn't something to write home about. Then again, you've seen the performance differences among all kits and that perf difference really remains small. The memory tweaks quite easily as well, running it at 4000 Mhz at the same times was not an issue, you can also manually drop to 3200 Mhz and run Cl14, this worked as well. So in that respect, the kit is quite flexible.

It is also a series that looks simple yet pleasing to the eye as the second you drop it into the motherboard, they are out of your visual perception,. and this they blend in beautifully on a dark-colored motherboard. They look nice in that all-black design, and no RGB is perhaps a plus for some. 

 Frequency versus latency and the 2:1 multiplier

The DIMMs we tested today are two high-density 8GB DIMM modules with Hynix A-Die ICs and, as such, it is good to see that this kit can quite easily run a 4000/4100 MHz frequency on our platform. Our kit does so with what is considered fast latency timings (CL18) and a 1.35 Voltage. Remember though: As soon as you go higher than DDR4-3733, a 2:1 multiplier will kick in and Infinity Fabric starts working at half the memory clock frequency. The 2:1 multiplier switches on at DDR4-3733 so do keep in mind that it will have an effect on the speed at which the various core complexes within the CPU can communicate with each other. For the best overall system performance, we recommend DDR4-3600 speed as the best maximum. If you're an overclocker then the result is that you can tweak the memory much further than you're used too. 

Conclusion

You've seen the numbers, as mentioned we like faster CL rating for AMD Ryzen, the performance benefits are often quite trivial at best, and low latency memory is more costly. The kit as presented today will be a more value product, available in 3200, 3600 and 4000 MHz. We'd advise 3600 as your maximum frequency as a choice of memory.  If you are a gamer 3200 MHz, CL14 is your better investment over 3600 MHz CL18. Team Group offers them both. pricing needs to settle as the kit is too new to the market for me to state anything conclusive just yet. Currently, the kit as tested hovers at 100 USD/EUR with feels a notch too high. The T-Force DarkZα is lovely in the sense that you drop it in, enable the XMP profile in your (updated) BIOS and it just runs at the advertised specification, we had no issues stability wise, neither did we run into weird boot behavior or anything like that. We've tested the kit on an ASUS and Ryzen 7 3800X / MSI X570 motherboard, both brands worked fine. So if priced right, we really can't complain as to what Team Group offers here but also acknowledge this isn't an enthusiast-class DDR4 memory kit. By it is far good enough, and stable slash compatible.

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