XLR8 Gaming DDR4 16GB 3200MHz Memory Review

How Much Does It Cost?

The new PNY 16GB (2x8GB) XLR8 Gaming EPIC-X RGB™ DDR4 3200MHz Desktop Memory Kit White Edition is available now on Amazon in the UK for a fairly reasonable £92.99. Perhaps a little more expensive than some, but I think prices are generally up in general at the moment. Plus, it’s only around £8 more than the black version, which isn’t too bad, and it’s actually great news if you wanted the black version.

Overview

As I suspected, the PNY XLR8 Gaming DDR4 16GB 3200MHz Memory performance is right on the money. It’s obviously very competitive too and while not the fastest memory PNY makes, at 3200MHz, it’s more than good enough for most PC gaming builds, or any other style of PC build really. While you can get larger capacities and speeds from PNY’s other memory products, they’ll come at a much bigger premium. I think they’ve found a great balance here between performance, build quality and aesthetics for under £100.

PNY has a good reputation behind them, especially for their more extreme hardware given how much work they do in servers and workstations. Of course, their XLR8 stuff is more consumer-focused, and typically very gamer-focused and I think their new memory fits that bill perfectly. The styling alone is enough to entice many gamers. The RGB is crisp and colourful, and easy to customise from basically all major motherboard manufacturer front ends (Asus Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync and ASRock Polychrome Sync). The new logo design looks great, and the choice of black or white is always welcome too.

The build quality is excellent too, with those aluminium heatsinks making easy work of keeping things cool and maintaining the performance levels. However, what strikes me the most is that the light bars aren’t held in by folding the metal over the top of the bar, as almost all brands do. Instead the modules flair out at the end and clamp there. This gives you a longer light bar but also leaves it completely exposed on the top, giving you a much cleaner look overall.

The performance was right where I expected it to be too, no big surprises really. The kit runs at CL16-18-18-38 and 1.35v, so it’s pretty decent for this price range. At 3200MHz, it’s not setting world records or anything, but it’s certainly not going to be a bottleneck either. Again, at under £100, it’s pretty competitive.

Should I Buy Them?

It’s hard not to recommend this memory kit. The super stylish and clean design, the great RGB integration, and a choice of black or white modules make it an easy choice for any system build. The performance, build quality and features on offer are all great and I’d happily have this in my next system build.