Compared to say Crucial, the shipping container which the Trident Z 16GB DDR4-3400 comes in is much more bold and brash in its appearance. While yes it still is ‘just’ a cardboard box the outside not only shows off the two-tone nature of the new Trident Z, it boldly proclaims that the Trident Z series offers ‘Performance for the Truly Extreme’. That certainly is a rather big claim to make but considering the F4-3400C16D-16GTZ kit offers DDR4-3400 levels of performance and it is not even close to being the fastest offering, G. Skill does have the abilities to back that claim up.
Opening the box, we can see that the Trident Z uses a standard two piece clear plastic internal container that keeps the RAM secure while in transit. This is fairly typical as it is as practical as it is frugal – i.e. it does not needless add to the weight of shipping the ram across the country (or continent) and yet offers good levels of protection.
Moving on to the RAM itself a few things do pop out. First and foremost is these are downright gorgeous looking DDR4-RAM modules. G. Skill’s Trident series has always been the more aesthetically pleasing model from G. Skill but this generation they knocked it out of the veritable park. This is because unlike nearly any other DDR4 kit available G. Skill has opted for a two tone look with one side of each stick covered in a brushed stainless steel heatsink and the other in a black heatsink! Equally attractive is G. Skill has included a top red insert that contrasts nicely with both sides. More importantly this combination allows the Trident Z series to compliment a wide variety of color schemes – everything from black, to gray, to red system build color schemes will ‘work’ with this model.
The next is these heatsinks are not only attractive looking but are extremely robust. Terms like ‘beefy’ do spring to mind when picking them up as each stick weighs in at nearly two and half ounces. With most of this additional weight coming from the heatsinks themselves. Though some of this weight also stems from the fact that G.Skill uses a ten layer PCB design for the Trident Z. Now that is overkill, and perfectly fine by us.
As a nice little bonus the speed of the RAM itself is embossed directly on to the end of the PCB and this will make sorting out which sticks are which in a parts pile eons easier than usual. In the either case, as most of this additional weight comes from the heatsinks this means that even when heavily overclocked the internal DDR4 RAM modules will not overheat. The downside to this is that the Trident Z series is moderately tall. To be specific they stand 44mm high, which is slightly more than their RipJaws V compatriots (42mm). This additional height may cause issues with some CPU cooling solutions, but most should be OK with it. By the same token compared to say Corsair’s LPX series they are downright massive so check your CPU coolers dimensions before making a final decision on which RAM kit to buy.
The next thing which stands out is if you pay careful attention to the numbers below the bar code you will see ‘A500’ mixed in. This means that the uber-high performance Samsung ICs are what G. Skill are using for their Trident Z series, and this is some of the highest performance DDR4 ICs that can be easily sourced these days. Put another way this is a great foundation upon which to create an ultra-high performance DDR4 RAM kit. Though it does also explain why this kit needs 1.35v – as the Samsung ICs need the additional voltage in order to reach these lofty heights.
Also impressive is this kit is rated for DDR4-3400 speeds and at a fairly fast 16-18-18-38 timings. On this end of things there are couple points that we do need to go over. First and foremost, G. Skill has only included one XMP profile and in order to hit the ‘oddball’ 3400 number your system’s BCLK really will need to be doing 102.11Mhz instead of more typical 100. This is because the XMP profile will try and use a 1:25 divider and 133:100 ratio…. which at 100BCLK will result in about 3333MHz. Since Z170 systems allow for insane BCLK levels this is not that big a deal, but if your system of choice is not a Z170 based system this may cause an occasional hiccup. G. Skill really should have taken the time to include a second XMP profile for DDR4-3333 for compatibilities sake. This is not that big a deal as 99 times out of 100 instead of causing instability issues all that will happen is the Trident Z ‘DDR4-3400’ kit will run at DDR4-3333(ish), but a secondary XMP profile to fall back on would have reduced this potential issue. On the positive side as this is a Samsung based set of RAM in all likelihood enthusiasts may even get higher performance out of this kit than what they paid for – which is a nice bonus.
