Consumer RAM is getting cheaper, and there has never been a better time to buy an enthusiast kit. Back only three or so years ago, you could quite happily spend $900 on a kit of 2000MHz RAM, these days, a 2400MHz kit like the G.SKILLTrident X reviewed today will cost you as little as $125.
Put simply, if you enjoy tweaking your RAM settings, or you feel you can benefit from faster RAM in specific applications, there is now almost no excuse for running cheap 1333MHz kits in your PC. World records are being shattered left and right as more and more overclockers are able to afford high performance RAM, and that can only be good for us consumers, as RAM producers are competing with each other quite fiercely once again to provide the fastest sticks, at the lowest prices. Now let’s get into this kit specifically, and what to expect.
Not much.
Upon firing up the G.SKILL Trident X RAM, we take a look in BIOS. Nothing out of the ordinary, so we decide to start off by running the XMP profile as we do with all RAM reviews. The system reboots, hangs on a black screen for a while, a while longer, and longer still until it’s certain the system is not actually going to pass POST.
Interestingly, a second check in BIOS reveals all settings are as they should be, 2400MHz frequency, CAS 10-12-12-31 (fairly slow timings) and the DRAM voltage is correctly set at 1.65v. Another reboot and we still don’t find stability.
This time we set voltage to 1.7v manually, and we get a successful POST, though fail memory tests once we begin benchmarking. 1.75v now, and we find stability, though it appears to be shaky still, as we get a BSOD after completing out benchmarks. The only remedy was to increase the cache timings from 10-12-12-31 to 11-12-12-31 under the same 1.75v.
We’re not saying that all kits of the G.SKILL Trident X are going to perform as lousy as this kit has, but for comparison we managed to run a competitors kit at 2600MHz CAS9 just the day before testing, so we know it is not out 3770K’s IMC. If a kit can’t run XMP it’s bad enough, let alone an “enthusiast kit” underperforming like this.
