G.Skill Drops The DDR5 Hammer With Lower Latency Trident Z5 RAM Up To DDR5-6400
G.Skill has carved out an enthusiast following for its high-performance memory kits and its efforts within the competitive overclocking community. Not looking to slow things down in the DDR5 era, G.Skill announced several "extreme performance" DDR5 memory kits, culminating in DDR5-6400 with comparatively tight timings (to what we have seen so far).
That's relative, of course—part of the trade off with opening up the bandwidth spigot at the DDR5 tap is that the faster transfer rates come at the expense of looser memory timings. Take for example GeIL's recently introduced Polaris RGB Sync memory. At DDR5-4800, timings are set at 40-40-40-77, at 1.1V.
The higher you go, the looser things get, or that is typically the case. G.Skill, however, is maintaining similar timings at faster transfer rates, and even tightening them. Have a look...
At the top end, G.Skill is offering a 32GB (2x16GB) Trident Z5 DDR5-6400 kit with 36-36-36-76 timings. That is pretty impressive, from what we have seen in DDR5 land up to this point. How much it truly matters remains to be seen, but the implication is that these modules feature high quality chips that are the cream of the crop.
More than just an implication, G.Skill pretty much outright says this, noting that it is using hand-screened memory ICs on all of these kits. And as for that top kit in particular, it boasts "high-quality Samsung DDR5 ICs and best-in-class components," G.Skill says.
The standard Trident Z5 lineup are said to incorporate "hypercar elements" into what is a familiar Trident heatspreader mold, with a raised edges. A black brushed aluminum strips serves as a racing strip, running across either a metallic silver or powdered matte black finish, with a piano black top bar for added sleekness.
We'd have to call a doctor if G.Skill didn't apply RGB lighting to its next-gen memory lineup, but that is not necessary. The same specifications are being offered among its Trident Z5 RGB DDR5 lineup. This time around, G.Skill redesigned the light bar on top, and users can still customize the lighting and effects, as well as sync the illumination to other system components.
The big question is how much will these kits cost, and that information is not available just yet—G.Skill never offers up RAM pricing because the market fluctuates (or so I was told a long while back). So, we'll have to wait. G.Skill says its Trident Z5 and Trident Z5 RGB DDR5 memory kits will be available in November (which aligns nice with rumors that Alder Lake land at retail next month).
