Team Group produce many different DDR4 memory kits for all kinds of different budgets, but today’s kit seems to blur the lines between enthusiast and budget.
The Dark Z is available in grey or red, and doesn’t sport any RGB LEDs of any kind, so it’s not exactly the flashiest DDR4 kit we’ve tested but the heatspreaders do their job and look decent while they’re at it.
The market’s flooded with RGB-equipped memory if that’s your thing, but if you don’t care for it or just don’t want to pay for it, having some decent, high frequency modules is good news and the Dark Z will see you right, for the most part.
The Dark Z memory kit has two main flaws, availability and latency.
Availability can easily be fixed, if and when Team Group ship their modules to other countries outside of the US, but the latency issue is somewhat more difficult, relying on the end-user to overclock the modules themselves, which introduces stability concerns. (If you’re hell-bent on getting your hands on this kit in the UK, it’s available from Amazon.com with only a small delivery fee added on for Prime members.)
Our testing showed that, at least in some part, the latency isn’t a major issue but it does leave performance on the table and in some instances it’s considerable. For example, the G.SKILL Trident Z Neo RGB that we tested last week, sports the same 3600MHz frequency but the 16-19-19-39 timings compared to Team Group’s 18-22-22-42 resulted in a surprising difference of 12FPS in our War Thunder CPU test and around 150 points in Cinebench R20, the G.SKILL kit is almost twice the price, mind you.
If you’re looking for a high frequency DRAM kit with a strict budget, this will definitely cut the mustard but the latency is somewhat concerning
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The Dark Z is available in grey or red, and doesn’t sport any RGB LEDs of any kind, so it’s not exactly the flashiest DDR4 kit we’ve tested but the heatspreaders do their job and look decent while they’re at it.
The market’s flooded with RGB-equipped memory if that’s your thing, but if you don’t care for it or just don’t want to pay for it, having some decent, high frequency modules is good news and the Dark Z will see you right, for the most part.
The Dark Z memory kit has two main flaws, availability and latency.
Availability can easily be fixed, if and when Team Group ship their modules to other countries outside of the US, but the latency issue is somewhat more difficult, relying on the end-user to overclock the modules themselves, which introduces stability concerns. (If you’re hell-bent on getting your hands on this kit in the UK, it’s available from Amazon.com with only a small delivery fee added on for Prime members.)
Our testing showed that, at least in some part, the latency isn’t a major issue but it does leave performance on the table and in some instances it’s considerable. For example, the G.SKILL Trident Z Neo RGB that we tested last week, sports the same 3600MHz frequency but the 16-19-19-39 timings compared to Team Group’s 18-22-22-42 resulted in a surprising difference of 12FPS in our War Thunder CPU test and around 150 points in Cinebench R20, the G.SKILL kit is almost twice the price, mind you.
If you’re looking for a high frequency DRAM kit with a strict budget, this will definitely cut the mustard but the latency is somewhat concerning
Pros
+ Cheapest 3600MHz kit we can find
+ Heatspreaders look great
+ No gimmicky RGB lighting to drive the price up
+ Lifetime warranty
Cons
- Not available in the UK or Australia
- Very slack timings
+ Cheapest 3600MHz kit we can find
+ Heatspreaders look great
+ No gimmicky RGB lighting to drive the price up
+ Lifetime warranty
Cons
- Not available in the UK or Australia
- Very slack timings
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
Stay connected with the Vortez Social Media pages:
Join in with the discussions on Discord
