It seems that the further in product’s life cycle you get the more mature and refined they become… but also the more and more loaded down with dross they get. Take for example the latest craze is not only adding brightly colored heatsinks but LED enabled heatsinks to RAM. Heatsinks with LEDS that can be customized to ‘play’ a fancy light show. While great for certain scenarios and highly customized builds, as well as being just plain fun, the fact remains that they are not needed. Instead, such additional features have been added simply to help distinguish one model from others. These days few builds actually need heat spreaders, let alone true heat sinks, and yet they are de rigueur these days. This is actually a pet peeve of ours and why the Silicon Power XPower AirCool series is so interesting.
To be precise, they are interesting in that they are ‘old school’ / ‘nekkid’ sticks of RAM, and yet thanks to such a late stage in the DDR4 life cycle still come with respectable ratings of DDR4-3200 at 16-18-18. Mix in the fact that since you are not paying for anything you (most likely) do not need and it should come as no surprise that this particular version of the XPower AirCool series will only set buyers back about $135. That certainly sounds like the start of a wonderful (value) relationship.
