G.SKILL Announces Impressively Spec’d 32GB DDR4-4000 CL15 Memory Kit

CPUs and GPUs tend to get the lion’s share of enthusiast attention, but some companies have been working hard to make sure that memory remains interesting. Last week, Corsair released a super-fast DDR4-5000 kit, which featured modest timings (for the speed) of 18-26-26. As of last week, that kit cost an impressive $1,225 USD, but it’s since dropped down to $1,080. We’ll have to watch and see if the price continues to eke downward.

It’s now G.SKILL’s turn to take back some of the limelight, while proving that Samsung B-die ICs still have room for reaching new performance heights. The company’s new DDR4-4000 TridentZ and TridentZ Royal kits are equipped with 15-16-16-36 timings. The CAS latency of 15 is really impressive here, because nowadays, it’s hard to find a kit of DDR4-3200 equipped with CL14 timings still available. And here we have a kit bumping the frequency to 4000MHz while only increasing CAS latency by a single value. That’s quite impressive.

Using our usual math to find the true latency (CL / (DDR Freq/2) * 1000), G.SKILL’s new kit hits 7.5 ns (15 / (4000/2) * 1000), which is a 1.25 ns improvement over the aforementioned DDR4-3200 CL14 kits. Even more impressive than that is that even the secondary timings are tight for the frequency, so all-in-all, G.SKILL has a really impressive kit on its hands here.

For the ultimate in performance, Corsair’s kit is still going to win, since it has the highest frequency as well as the lowest effective latency (7.2 ns, vs 7.5 ns). That said, Corsair’s kit is not only expensive, it’s only 16GB. Therefore, if G.SKILL prices this kit near more expected levels, it could prove to be a seriously attractive option.

It’s really good to see these new kits continue to trickle out. Just when it seemed like DDR4 has reached a point of minimal improvement, we now see a 5GHz kit out there, and a 4GHz CL15 32GB kit coming. Perhaps these may not seem so impressive once DDR5 arrives, but for now, they’re definitely drool-worthy.