Silicon Power XPower AirCool DDR4-3200

While the XPower AirCool series certainly will not be overly interesting for overclocking enthusiasts, and uber high-end systems with custom color schemes, it doesn’t have to do either in order to be a success. Those buyer demographics simply are not who the XPower AirCool design team was focused in on when they spec’ed it out. Instead the XPower AirCool is tailor made for those who do not want to compromise on performance, but do not want to spend a noticeable chunk of their limited budget for RAM. At this the XPower AirCool is a success. They are a good choice made for a huge chunk, arguably majority, of buyers looking for RAM that is both fast enough and good enough to satisfy their needs. Quite honestly, with such a reasonable asking price there is almost no good reason to opt for slower ‘value’ models… even if they come clad in a ‘heatsink’.

This is because while it may not be pretty, let alone fancy looking, and it may not be worth a darn in the overclocking department, it does have enough of both to satisfy the typical buying public’s actual needs. Once you get above 3200 to 3400 frequencies the real-world benefit really, really starts to decline. The same is true for the typical ‘heatsinks’ found on most RAM sticks. With most you are basically paying for nothing more than aesthetics with little real benefits. Of course, there are exceptions to this, Crucial’s Elite series springs to mind, but for most people who are not interested in pushing the boundaries of their RAM overclock the typical heat spreader does very little in the way of giving you more thermal room than the XPower AirCool.

This may cause a bad case of cognitive dissonance in some buyers. Thanks to extensive marketing for years, less experienced buyers have been trained to think heatsink equal performance and no heatsink means trash. To help with this headache, think of the enterprise marketplace. A market where durability and reliability are prioritized… and realize that those extremely expensive sticks of RAM do not (typically) come with heatsinks. So, if it is good enough for a server that costs more than your car, why would it not be good enough for your system?

It really is a shame that such statements are going to be controversially, and those yelling the loudest about how we are wrong will be classic examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. This is well known amongst actual experienced system builders. Unfortunately for Silicon Power, overcoming years and years of marketing will be difficult. The XPower AirCool may indeed be a good, arguably great, value but we do foresee it having an uphill battle. Their loss is your gain.