G.Skill Trident-X 2400 CL10 Dual Channel RAM Kit

 

So lets say you’re an enthusiast.  Lets say you want to push your rig to the max.  You always have the fastest processor and the highest video card(s).  However your RAM is a measly 1600MHz or 1866MHz.  Lets look at maxing that out with a 2400MHz kit. G.Skill has released a Dual Channel 2400MHz kit which is what we’re taking a look at today.  The 2400MHz RAM is often only meant for the enthusiast market (and often with an enthusiast price tag) however this 8GB kit comes in under $100. Lets move on to see if this kit is worthy of your enthusiast rig.

 

Model Number	F3-2400C10D-8GTX
Series	TridentX
System Type	DDR3
Motherboard Chipset	Z77
Capacity	8GB (4GB x2)
Tested Speed	DDR3-2400MHz (PC3-19200)
Tested Latency	10-12-12-31 2N
SPD Speed	1333 MHz
SPD Voltage	1.5V
Height	54mm with fins, 39mm without
Warranty	Lifetime
Fan Included	No

Couple things to point out here before we move on to getting our first look at the RAM itself: this kit is spec’d for the Z77 chipset from Intel but it will work in any DDR3 supported setup.  This kit comes as 2 dimms of 4GB each which are spec’d (and tested) at 2400MHz.  This speed will max out every motherboard except for the most extreme pushing your rig to the max.  Our Latencys’ are a little higher than desirable which is to be expected with 2400Mhz.  A great feature G.Skill has added to this kit is the ability to remove the upper red fins to support coolers requiring low profiles.  The final great feature G.Skill has added with this kit (and all of their kits) is the Lifetime Warranty.  I speak from experience when I say the G.Skill RMA process is painless and worth the buy.

 

(NOTE: G.Skill recommends the TridentX RAM for i7-3770K and i5-3570K because with the Ivy-Bridge processors the memory controller is built into the chip instead of being on the board itself.  While researching other users who have this same kit using any other processor, users did report instability or inability to reach spec’d speeds.)

	Here we get the chance to compare the Trident Series versus the RipjawsZ

Now lets put this performance memory kit to the test in our Intel i7-3820 powered test setup!

 

Test Setup

• Intel Core i7-3820 Processor (10M Cache, up to 3.80GHz)
• Corsair Hydro Series™ H100 Extreme performance liquid CPU cooler
• G-Skill Trident 8GB Dual Channel 2400 @ 1.65
• ASRock x79 Fatal1ty Professional Motherboard
• Raidmax 1200w Bronze Power Supply
• Sapphire 7950 Video Card
• 128 Crucial m4 SSD
• Windows 7 x64 Professional with all updates

CPU-Z

	CL 10, tRCD 12, tRP 12, and tRAS 31	Showing speed profiles reportedand XMP profile

Using CPU-Z we can see the massive 2400Mhz speed and the 10,12,12,31 clocks of this RAM kit.  While the 2400Mhz is the max for current motherboards, the timings are a little higher than desirable.  How will this transfer to benchmarking? Lets move forward to find out.

AIDA64 Extreme v2.50.2000

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software which provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. For our purposes today, AIDA64 is used to test the read, write, copy, and latency of the G-Skill Trident RAM kit.  The later benchmarks of AIDA64 provide a comparison of this RAM kit’s performance to a collection of other CPU/RAM combinations and how they rated in the same test.

 

Read –  19137 MB/s

Write – 14747 MB/s

Copy – 16277 MB/s

Latency – 46.0 ns

These are the results of the comparative  read, write, copy, and latency tests. Overall the G-Skill Trident RAM kit proves itself a worthy companion in a X79 or Z77 based setup for a dual channel kit.  This kit rivals its larger quad channel competitors (GeIL EVO CORSA 16GB DDR3 Quad Channel Review).

G-Skill Trident ranks #1	G-Skill Trident ranks #3 (2nd in dual channel)
G-Skill Trident ranks #1 (3rd in dual channel)	G-Skill Trident ranks #1

MemTach

 MemTach is a benchmark based on memset and memcpy are functions from the C programming language. These functions are used to set the contents of a block of memory and copy the contents of a block of memory to another block. Although this benchmark tool is older, from the data we can extract that our RAM’s average memset is 6492.4 MB/sec and memcpy is 8646.9.0 MB/sec with a total run-time of  9.68 seconds. Again impressive results that show this memory kit is engineered to handle a high throughput of data.

 

Performance Test 7.0

PerformanceTest v7.0 provides an all in one benchmark for testing a all components and subsystems of the test setup. For our purposes we will take a look at the detailed memory performance test results.  For a Dual Channel kit, the G-Skill Trident is definitely top of the line.

 

All things considered, this is a great kit for the enthusiast.  The Physical design of this kit allows flexibility between flashy looks and low profile.  The RAM itself is speedy and made for high amounts of speedy throughput.  Enthusiast level RAM used to cost an arm and a leg, but this kit comes in at just under $100 ($99.99 at time of writing).  And to top it all off, a lifetime warranty covers the RAM if something were to happen.

Pros	Cons
Enthusiast Specification and Enthusiast Performance Flexible size for CPU Coolers Lifetime Warranty Pricetag	Restricted compatibility list

With all of that in mind, I have no reason to knock this kit other than the restricted compatibily.  Although this isn’t G.Skills’ fault, it is something to keep in mind with enthusiast-grade products (along the lines of you’re only as good as your weakest link).  We at Techwarelabs are awarding the TridentX 2400MHz 8GB kit our Editors Choice Award because it is new to the industry (affordable 2400MHz RAM was unheard of in the past).  If you’re looking for an 8GB enthusiast kit, take a look at G.Skills’ TridentX line.