G.Skill 16GB 2400MHz RipJaws DDR4 Memory Review

Introduction G.Skill always seem to be ahead of the competition when it comes to releasing high frequency memory products and with DDR4 nothing has changed. Just a few days before writing this review G.Skill announced their 3300MHz DDR4 memory kits were available to buy but we have something a lot more modest in the office for today's review. We have G.Skill's RipJaws 4 series memory, the 4 obviously denotes DDR4, and more specifically we have a DDR4-2400MHz kit that is 16GB in size with modest CL15 latencies. G.Skill have opted for a very neat and tidy heat-spreader design that comes in a variety of colours (blue/red/black) on a matte black PCB. G.Skill are also using the latest Hynix ICs that are famed for their overclocking potential: lets hope that holds true today. Specifications Packaging and Accessories The packaging is simple and to the point: which is what you'd expect with memory. The front points out the targeting of the X99 platform: if you're a consumer you couldn't use these modules with anything else other than X99. In the near future we should see mainstream DDR4 support with Intel's Skylake. A Closer Look The heatspreader has a very nice design that looks rugged and industrial. It is only marginally taller than a standard RAM module, by about 1cm so it shouldn't cause any clearance issues unless you have a really low-resting CPU cooler. Motherboard Installation Pictures Red and Black Motherboards - ASUS Rampage V Extreme The kit G.Skill sent us stands out on all X99 motherboards - blue doesn't go with anything we've been sent but G.Skill do make red and black variants too. Orange and Black Motherboards - Gigabyte X99 UD4 Yellow and Black Motherboards - MSI X99S XPower AC Test System and Procedure Methods & Tests In our RAM reviews we keep things relatively simple. We put the RAM kit that is being tested into our test system and we benchmark it at its primary XMP profile using a variety of benchmarks and tests. Once complete we then overclock the kit to see how far we can push it in raw frequency terms, then benchmark it again using the same combination of tests with a CPU-Z validation of the overclock. Cinebench R15 Multi-threaded Test AIDA64 Engineer Edition Memory Bandwidth and Latency Test SiSoft Sandra Tech Support (Engineer) Memory Bandwidth Test WPrime 32M Calculation Test 3DMark Fire Strike Physics Test Test System #1 (Intel Z97 DDR3) Motherboard - Asus Maximus VII Ranger Z97 Processor - Intel Core i7 4770K at Stock With Turbo Enabled RAM - Varies By Review Graphics Card - Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X 4GB Graphics Card CPU Cooler - Corsair H100i with Quiet Fan Profile and Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste Power Supply - Be Quiet Straight Power E9 680W Main Storage Drive - Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSD over SATA III interface Chassis - Lian Li T60 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit Test System #2 (Intel X99 DDR4) Motherboard - Asus Rampage V Extreme X99 Processor - Intel Core i7 5960X at Stock With Turbo Enabled RAM - Varies By Review Graphics Card - Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X 4GB Graphics Card CPU Cooler - Corsair H100i with Quiet Fan Profile and Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste Power Supply - Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive - Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSD over SATA III interface Chassis - Lian Li T60 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to review our test system and thank those sponsors who kindly provided us with test equipment to make our work possible. We offer our thanks to: Intel for supplying us with a Core i7 4770K processor, which we reviewed here, and a Core i7 5960X processor, which we reviewed here. Kingston for supplying us with a Hyper X 3K 240GB solid state drive, which we reviewed here. Corsair for supplying us with a Hydro Series H100i liquid CPU cooler, which we reviewed here. Be Quiet for supplying us with a Straight Power E9 680W power supply unit, which we reviewed here, and a Power Zone 1000W power supply unit, which we reviewed here. Sapphire for supplying us with an AMD R9 290 Tri-X graphics card, which we reviewed here. ASUS for supplying us with a Maximus VII Ranger Z97 Motherboard, which we reviewed here, and a Rampage V Extreme Motherboard, which we will have reviewed soon. Lian Li for supplying us with a PC-T60A test bench. Noctua for supplying us with NT-H1 thermal compound. Software Used SiSoft Sandra Tech Support Engineer AIDA 64 Engineer 3DMark WPrime CPU-Z Overclocking and Performance The Overclock When we overclock memory kits in our reviews we go for all out frequency, this is primarily done by tweaking the DRAM frequency presets in the BIOS. Once we top out at the highest stable frequency divider we see if any more frequency can be had by increasing the baseclock, or by changing the baseclock (particular relevant for X99). Typically we set timings as the JEDEC profile recommendations for the frequency we are going for, if this does not work we allow auto-timings to be calculated by the motherboard. Normally we will only make small adjustments to the BCLK and timings to keep the system stable, we will also not use more than 1.65 volts for DDR3 and 1.5 volts for DDR4 as this is not recommended for 24/7 operation. Overclocking was fairly modest with the G.Skill kit. We managed to get from 2400MHz to 2666MHz, we couldn't get to the next divider which was 2800MHz. Neither could we get up to a frequency higher than 2666MHz by changing the baseclock to 125 or 166MHz - the kit just didn't want to go any further. 2666MHz is still a decent achievement though and was fairly easy to do: just change the divider and crank the voltage up to 1.35. Cinebench CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s CPU performance. Cinebench R15 is a totally free utility and is available for download here. Cinebench is fairly sensitive to changes in memory frequency and timings. AIDA64 AIDA64 implements a set of 64-bit benchmarks to measure how fast the computer performs various data processing tasks and mathematical calculations. Memory and cache benchmarks are available to analyze system RAM bandwidth and latency. A free version of AIDA64 is available for download here. SiSoft Sandra The SiSoft Sandra memory benchmark is based on STREAM. STREAM is a popular memory bandwidth benchmark that has been used on personal computers to super computers. It measures sustained memory bandwidth not burst or peak. Therefore, the results may be lower than those of other benchmarks. Download a free trial version of SiSoft Sandra here. WPrime wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions. wPrime is a free utility that is available for download here. WPrime is influenced by memory timings and frequency. 3DMark Fire Strike 3DMark Firestrike is Futuremark’s latest creation for testing the GPU performance of high end gaming PCs using Direct X 11 graphics. You can download a free basic version of 3DMark here. We use only the Physics score as this is most sensitive to memory frequency and timing changes. Final Thoughts Pricing (accurate at the time of writing) In the UK G.Skill's 16GB RipJaws 4 2400MHz kit can be had for £239.99 at Overclockers in Black, Blue and Red. In the USA they can be had for $279.99 at Newegg in Black, Blue and Red. The G.Skill RipJaws kits come with a lifetime warranty. Consumers interested in other configurations should know G.Skill currently make 2133 to 3300MHz RipJaws DDR4 kits in 4 or 8GB modules. Summary Given that all DDR4 memory performs fairly close to each other in real-world scenarios excelling in other non-performance areas becomes important. This is something G.Skill have done very well with over the years and something they continue to demonstrate with their RipJaws 4 products. G.Skill offer a range of colours, speeds and capacities to appeal to a wide variety of users and best of all the pricing is very competitive. You're also reassured by the lifetime warranty that is offered. On the performance side there's nothing bad to say: overall performance was solid even if overclocking didn't gain as much as I'd hoped for. Best of all the latency on these G.Skill modules was fantastic further reaffirming the strength of Hynix ICs for overclockers and performance enthusiasts. Pros Excellent latency Range of colours, speeds and capacities Lifetime warranty Cons Limited overclocking headrooms Could be lower in profile "G.Skill's RipJaws 4 DDR4 memory kits offer a great balance of looks, value for money and performance. It's no wonder G.Skill have become an increasingly popular choice for memory." Thank you to G.Skill for providing this review sample.