After taking a long hard look at numerous Silicon Power long-term storage solutions we did feel it necessary to broaden ours – and you our loyal readers’ – horizons by taking a long look at their Random Access Memory solutions. This is a relatively new area for Silicon Power and we are always curious about how well a company handles the transition from the experienced to the inexperienced arena. To be precise we are going to take a long hard look at Silicon Power’s very first heatsink clad DDR4 series – the aptly named ‘Silicon Power DDR4 Gaming’ series.
Our review sample is the dual stick, 8GB per stick DDR4-2400 DDR4 Gaming model and while that certainly is a mouthful what all means is fairly self-evident. It’s a 2x8GB DDR4-2400 set of memory that comes with increased cooling potential via heatsinks, increased aesthetics (also due to those selfsame heatsinks), and increase overclocking performance. To be a bit more precise this $160 (USD) kit is rated for DDR4-2400 speeds with 17-17-17 timings and is able to do this with only 1.2volts.
On the surface having a new series top out at DDR4-2400 speeds with fairly loose timings does not sound all that impressive. However, a dirty little secret of the industry is all those ‘high performance’ kits (eg DDR4-3000) are made up of nothing more than highly binned DDR4-2400 ICs as that is the fastest JEDEC recognized clock speed for DDR4 (remember DDR4 specification was finalized way back in 2012). There is nothing special about those higher performance modules beyond being guaranteed to hit a certain higher clock frequency level via a ton of factory testing and binning.
The Silicon Power DDR4 Gaming series on the other hand does not go through any additional binning processes – beyond being guaranteed to hit DDR4-2400 CL17 at 1.2v. As such these models may indeed be a really good bargain for those adventurous enough to take a small risk on them and do a bit of manual overclocking. After all, XX for DDR4-2400 kit is about right… but is downright reasonable compared to typical DDR4-2800 kits. So is DDR4 Gaming series even worth your time and effort in tracking down? Let’s find out.
