G.Skill Trident Z Royal F4-4000C17D-32GTRSB 4000 MHz 32 GB memory kit review

G.Skill products have been on our market for more than 10 years and during all this time they have gained wide popularity among enthusiasts and overclockers due to the excellent potential of advanced solutions. The Trident Z series has proven itself well, which has become the main one for this manufacturer and whose representatives differ from each other only in their external design. Different coatings and colors of radiators or decorative elements, the presence or absence of lighting – all this brings a certain variety to the model range. Unfortunately, some solutions, due to their appearance, still caused a mixed reaction among domestic users. Naturally, we are talking about the Trident Z Royal series.

But, as they say, they are greeted by their clothes, but they are escorted by their mind, i.e. by potential. And what is our copy of the G.Skill Trident Z Royal F4-4000C17D-32GTRSB – we will try to find out.

G.Skill Trident Z Royal F4-4000C17D-32GTRSB

The memory set comes in a black plain cardboard box without any colorful printing and looks more like a jewelry box than ordinary computer components.

And so much pathos was not invested in vain – opening the box we see two silver “ingots” located in a form of foam. Additionally, the kit includes an insert with an offer to register the purchased product, a sticker with the company logo and a microfiber cloth for wiping the trims.

And to be honest, a rag will not be superfluous, since the modules have a glossy finish on the radiators, they are very easily soiled and fingerprints easily remain on them, and if they are not wiped in time, then the traces have a chance to remain forever. Partially, the factory film saves from pollution, but after installing the modules in the motherboard, it should still be removed so that it does not affect the heat transfer of the radiators.

The shape of the bars are the same as the first Trident Z, but instead of anodizing, silver plating is now used, and the transparent plastic insert is made with gem-like edges. It looks glamorous, but not everyone likes this look.

The radiator halves are made by milling from a rather thick piece of aluminum alloy and are attached to the chips with thermal Velcro. The light guide overlaps in the upper part, which increases the rigidity of the entire structure.

Considering the volume of each bar, equal to 16 GB, 16 Samsung K4A8G085WB-BCPB chips are soldered to the PCB, eight pieces on each side.

Backlight control can be done both with a proprietary utility and with programs from motherboard manufacturers, and these are Asus Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light and ASRock Polychrome Sync.

There is no synchronization between the modules, but due to the shape of the light guide, beautiful multi-colored effects are created, so that even with asynchronous operation they look quite good.

On each bar there is a sticker with the name of the kit and an indication of its frequency, timings, operating voltage, volume and number of modules in the kit. Quite informative, given that some manufacturers, even the first echelon, do not take a steam bath.

The 32 GB G.Skill Trident Z Royal F4-4000C17D-32GTRSB dual-channel kit is designed for a frequency of 4000 MHz with timings of 17-18-18-38 at a voltage of 1.4 V. Naturally, such settings will be available after activating XMP, until then the memory will operate in JEDEC mode.

Test configuration

The memory was overclocked on an AMD platform with the following configuration:

• processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X;
• motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula (UEFI 3302);
• video card: ASUS ROG-STRIX-RX5500XT-O8G-GAMING (Radeon RX 5500 XT);
• cooler: custom CBO circuit;
• drive #1: Kingston KC600 512GB;
• body: Cooler Master Test Bench v1.0;
• power supply: Seasonic SS-650KM (650 W);
• operating system: Windows 10 Pro x64 (21H1).

Testing was carried out in the Windows 10 x64 environment. To check the stability of the overclocking of the modules, we used the LinX 0.7.0 AMD Edition program for 15 minutes, the amount of memory in which was set at 12288 MB. For additional verification, the y-crancher benchmark was used with the maximum task for the entire amount of RAM. The processing cores of the processor worked at the default frequency, the voltage on the SoC was set at 1.131 V. At all frequencies, the memory worked with a Command Rate of 1. The modules were additionally blown by a 92 mm fan.

Test results

Of course, it would be better for our kit to use a modern Intel platform, since it allows you to easily increase the memory frequency above 4000 MHz, but with the release of Rocket Lake-S processors, the efficiency of high-frequency RAM has been reduced to nothing and values ​​​​above 3600-3800 MHz transfer the memory controller to slow mode. But for AMD solutions with the Vermeer core, you can get maximum performance at a frequency of 3800-4000 MHz, depending on the CPU instance, which looks more interesting.

Considering that our Ryzen 7 5800X is reluctant to take 2000 MHz for the Infinity Fabric bus, we will limit ourselves to a stable 1900 MHz, which ultimately gives us 3800 MHz in memory, and tuning all the delays allows us to reduce latency quite well, as we will see below.

In this mode, the system remained completely stable and it was even possible to pass several passes of the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark, which is very sensitive to memory overclocking.

Now let’s take a look at the capabilities of the kit when operating at its native frequency. True, in this case, the IF bus will operate at 1800 MHz, and the memory controller at 1000 MHz, but the timings will remain at the same level, with the exception of RFC and RDWR, which had to be raised to 320 and 9, respectively.

There were no stability issues here either, and the system passed all tests, including Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The supply voltage, as in the case of 3800 MHz, was 1.425 V.

For example, below are the memory indicators in XMP (DOCP) mode.

conclusions

With the Trident Z Royal F4-4000C17D-32GTRSB kit as an example, G.Skill has proved that it produces some of the best memory kits for enthusiasts who want to get the most out of their hardware. With it, you can easily speed up the work of systems based on the AMD platform by fine-tuning the RAM, and not only at a frequency of 3800 MHz, but also at home. Of course, the design of the Trident Z Royal series is not for everyone, but for some it will come in and even fit into builds with an eye to modding, especially when using custom water cooling. If there is no desire to overclock, then you can look at faster kits from this manufacturer, but the price tag there will be almost twice as high.