G.Skill TridentZ Royal DDR4 3200 MHz review - A double data-rate introduction

G.SKILL TridentZ Royal 3200 MHZ DDR4 Memory
Aesthetics through the roof with a high performance 16 GB memory kit

We review what can be considered the most beautiful DDR4 memory we have seen to date from G.Skill. It's available in multiple frequencies and timings, we test the 3200 MHz kit (CL14). With XMP 2.0 memory profiles on Intel platforms as well as support for AMD Ryzen, we check a memory type that sets and defines a whole new standard in style and design.

The good people from G.Skill figured, hey, let's go do something really out of the ordinary. Grab some awesome memory, give it a black PCB, some awesome memory ICs and apply an out of the ordinary look and design.

The looks feature a full-length crystalline light bar upon a polished heatspreader in gold or silver look with an awesome 8-zone RGB lighting. The memory will become available in a wide variety of high-speed specifications, the Trident Z Royal is first available from DDR4-3000MHz running upwards to DDR4-4600MHz. G.SKILL to date has got to be the most renowned memory partner of Guru3D.com, they simply build awesome kits on many variations, frequencies, and price levels. G.SKILL works very closely with the PC component industry, thus motherboard manufacturers often support 99% of the kits that G.SKILL releases, and if it isn't supported, you can bet that in the next firmware update it will be. We've seen this with the Ryzen launch, memory support was pretty dramatic, it was G.KILL that worked closely with AMD to get the first dedicated and AMD optimized Ryzen kits in the stores. Hats off and kudos for that.

Today we'll test the new TridentZ Royal series. Proper good memory, with more good latency timings, yet available in many clock frequencies and timings really. For our test kit, G.SKILL supplied a dual-channel (2xDIMM) DDR4 kit rated at 3200 MHz with a nice CL14. They will offer these kits starting at 3000 MHz in several combinations to address dual and quad-channel memory configurations.

DDR4 memory modules, you can choose from plenty and honestly, cheap but dull all-green Kingston Value memory, for example, works absolutely fine. Then there are regular mainstream DIMMs, then step it up a little and, say, high-frequency memory is a hint faster and often cooler looking inside your PC with the fancy designs and heat-spreaders. For the last stage in the channel, there's enthusiast grade memory for the performance enthusiasts, which is what we will look at as G.SKILL has released, for example, their TridentZ series memory. Being G.Skill these DIMMs will all receive a lifetime warranty as well as being XMP 2.0 compatible, enabled with a simple XMP profile in your BIOS.

Anyway, let's fire up this review. Lots of photos, I promise!