Today let’s have a look at a new kid on the block in the gaming memory segment, a company called Neo Forza and presenting their RGB offering, the MARS DDR4 RAM kit. You might recognize their parent company – GoldKey – which has been the OEM of several well established companies.
These overclocking kits start from 3000 MHz and end up all the way to 4400 MHz while reaching up to 16 GB density per module. They seem very potent and interesting while having SF/industrial looking heatsinks, which for the moment can be had in either a grey or a red overall theme.
They started out as a I/C design house, after which they deployed DDR4 solutions. With that, they became OEM house for international brands for the past 15 years. They take pride in streamlining their wafer screen processes and basically obtaining multiple timings for any frequency. Thus their slogan “Capacity is Power, Speed is King” makes perfect sense. Meet Neo Forza, a new force in the gaming market.
Prices and Availability
Unfortunately they are quite scarce due to the global shortage and as I am aware they retail for around $110. When this situation changes for the better and more inventory is available, please check back to see the updated links.
24.03.2021 Update – Currently they are in Newegg’s inventory for $125.99 (link).
25.03.2021 Update – Don’t forget to check the video review as well!
Presentation and Specification
*Courtesy of their website.*
Neo Forza MARS RGB DDR4 overclocking memory is designed with image of blades. Symbol of Mysterious and sharp. Finest components for best performance and durability Light Bar LED will glow with three primary colors, red green and blue light are added together in various ways – Sleek looks and cool, high speed performance.
Specs:
* Module Type: 288 Pin Unbuffered DIMM Non ECC
* Capacity: 8GBx2
* Frequency: 3600MHz
* CL-Value: CL19-23-23-46
* Voltage: 1.35V
* Heat Sink: Aluminum heat-sink
* Warranty: Lifetime Warranty
Visual Inspection and Installation
They come shipped in a minimalist branded package but easy to grasp all of the important information. Also there is a cut-out to actually see one of the memory modules inside.
On the back you get a list of all of the main highlights and even the specs for the entire MARS series which is nice if you want to do a quick cross-comparison.
Both sticks are safely secured in this transparent plastic clamshell.
So here they are, the 16 GB DDR4 (8GB per stick) 3600 MHz CL18 RGB MARS kit, with the grey aluminium heatsinks.
On the sides, the company name will light up when the RAM is in use.
The information sticker houses besides the main specs, the serial number and product code.
The RGB lightbars have a very interesting look, almost like ice-skating blades.
They use a single C-die 8GB per module, made by SK-Hynix.
Height wise, they require almost 47 mm to clear. Here is a size perspective next to the Corsair LPX which are ~34 mm tall.
Here they are installed in our main SFF build, around the Dan A4 SFX.
If you are interested for this specific case, I am happily to report that they will fit and clear the side panel with ease since the limit is 52 mm.
Action time! The RGB looks really good reminiscent of energy beams. The RAM is compatible with all of the main motherboard vendors’ lighting software.
Remember the cut outs for the logo? They look really good!
Testing Methodology
We will employ a run of synthetic benchmarks at their X.M.P/D.O.C.P value of 3600 MHz for 1.35v @ CL18-19-19-39 and then try to overclock them further to see how much free performance we can squeeze out of them.
As for the overclocking side, the best we managed to get out of them was 4400 MHz @ 1.45v with the CL20-26-26-46 CR1 (tRC 101 vs 83 stock XMP/DOCP) which is really good.
We recommend that you don’t touch the SOC voltages since this will create instabilities for the PCIe Gen4 motherboards. Hence why the above OC was achieved by taking the stock XMP/DOCP profile and manually adding the MHz and DRAM voltage while leaving the sub-timings on auto. The Ryzen DRAM Calculator isn’t up to date for the B550 platform as the moment of writing. Once this gets updated we may include even more OC results.
Hardware used:
– CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 AM4 – 4c/8t @ 65W TDP
– CPU Cooler: Asetek 645LT 92mm AIO
– Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-i Gaming mITX @ BIOS 0608
– RAM: 32GB (2×16) Corsair LPX Vengeance 3600 MHz CL18
– Boot SSD: T-Create Classic 1TB TLC PCIe NVMe
– SSD: T-Force Cardea Liquid 512GB TLC PCIe NVMe
– Video card(s): ASUS GTX 1080 STRIX A8G
– PSU: Corsair SF750 SFX Platinum
– Case: DAN A4-SFX V4.1 ITX
– Case fans 92 mm: Noctua NF-A9x14 HS-PWM.chromax.Black.swap
Competition RAM:
– 32GB DDR4 Crucial Vengeance LPX 3600 MHz CL18
– 32GB DDR4 T-Create 10L 3200 MHz CL22
– 16GB DDR4 T-Force DARK Zα 3600 MHz CL18
Software:
– OS: Windows 10 Pro x64 Version 20H2
– CPU-Z v1.92 – To verify the CPU’s and RAM’s statistics
– Aida64 Extreme v6.20 – Memory analysis and Benchmark suite
– Geekbench Pro v5.2.5 – Great overall benchmark suite of tests
– Cinebench R15 – Popular CPU benchmark
– Cinebnech R20 – The new revised version optimised for the newer multi-core CPUs
– 3D/Game(s) – Assassin’s Creed Valhalla set at FHD, with everything at Max quality Settings, no V-Sync
– NVIDIA Drivers – 461.92
Testing, Results and Analysis
Let’s start with the CPU intensive benchmark – Cinebench’s R15. This is not a direct test for RAM but more an indirect help to the CPU to get better results. Here we see a small increase over the stock profile with our OC setting.
Next up is R20 which is a more modern up to date multi core benchmark suite. Here we see another increase with the OC but apparently the larger capacity kits take the lead.
Next up is the integrated memory benchmark from AIDA64 so we can inspect the overall read, write and copy bandwidth. As you know timings make a huge difference with RAM and for some reason we can’t improve the latency and thus the ‘Read’ results in the OC are lower than the stock values but the ‘Copy’ and ‘Write’ get a cool increase.
The last synthetic test comes from Geekbench which gives us an overall performance index for both single and multi core scores. There is a minor increase in the OC scenario.
Now for a gaming session, one benchmark run in the latest Assassin’s Creed title, Valhalla. With games, the numbers only tell a part of the story so please check the video so you can see the actual increase in fluidity with the OC scenario since the game scales really well with higher frequency kits. Thus the Neo Forza MARS kit take the lead in the gaming chart.
Conclusion
Well, these are a cool dazzle from Neo Forza and that should not come as a total surprise since these guys behind the company have been making RAM for quite some time now as an OEM supplier. The MARS kit has an excellent combo of capacity and speed, mostly for the Ryzen platform @ 3600 MHz. Then the fact that you can easily overclock them that high and if you have the patience to really fine tune the sub-timings, you may get even better results. They were not that warm even at 1.45v for the OC testing which shows that aluminium heatsink actually works and it’s not just for looks. All in all, when these will be back in stock they are worthy of a spot in your shopping list.
The good:
+ Very good overall performance
+ Great overclocking potential to be unlocked
+ Excellent RGB implementation
+ Lifetime Warranty
+ Cool aluminium heatsink design
The bad:
– Need a lot of voltage (at least in our tests) to be stable in higher OC values
– The sub-timings need a lot of fine tuning to get the best out of them but again these are OC orientated kits and will require extra knowledge and patience
Glob3trotters “Excellent” Award 4.5 out of 5
A lot of thanks to Neo Forza for supplying us with this kit !
