After that great experience we had with their RGB memory kit, Neo Forza kindly send over another pair of DDR4 RAM sticks that promises the same or even more unlockable potential. This is their FAYE range which are for those who need a stealthier approach to looks while maxing out on the performance gauge.
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
The retail price for our test sample is around $309 on Newegg.com for now, until the global crisis with semiconductors will be remedied and then the prices should improve. Even so, they are priced reasonably well if you compare them to some matching kits, spec-wise, on Newegg.
The FAYE range offers a lot of variety to choose from, we are talking about kits starting from 8GB all the way to 64GB and speeds from 3000 to 4400 MHz, in single, dual or quadruple DIMM kits.
*23/04/2021 Update – Check out the video review as well!*
Presentation and Specification
*Courtesy of their website.*
Neo Forza Faye DDR4 overclocking memory is designed with eagle wing inspired appearance. Symbol of sharp observation. Great performance for gaming application. Faye provides excellent cooling performance, as well as great stability whether you are on the battlefield gaming or trying to achieve higher benchmarks while overclocking.
Specs:
* Module Type: 288 Pin Unbuffered DIMM Non ECC
* Capacity: 8GBx2
* Frequency: 4000MHz
* CL-Value: CL19-23-23-46
* Voltage: 1.40V
* Heat Sink: Aluminum heat-sink
* Warranty: Lifetime Warranty
Visual Inspection and Installation
They come shipped in a transparent plastic clamshell so you can see 100% the memory modules inside.
The overall theme is as minimal as it gets and there is just a small quick description on the back regarding the highlights of the FAYE kit.
Here they are, the 32 GB (2x 16GB) 4000 MHz CL19 FAYE DDR4 RAM kit in the all-black aluminium heatsinks. They have a very cool and abstract design for the heatsink, reminiscent of an eagle which spreads its wings. The Neo Forza logo is smack in the middle and has this very interesting 3D effect.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen such an airflow optimised memory kit, way back with some DDR3 Crucial Ballistix ones. This open top design will speed up the cooling process even more so if there’s direct airflow available.
They use a 10-layer PCB with memory chips made by SK-Hynix.
The opposite side houses the information sticker with all of the main specs like capacity, timings and serial numbers.
Lastly, here they are next to an LP (low profile) kit from Corsair. The Neo Forza FAYE kits are approximatively 43 mm tall which is considered a medium height kit.
If you are after a stealthier build, well, these FAYE kits are absolutely perfect for such a scenario.
Testing Methodology
We will employ a run of synthetic benchmarks at their X.M.P/D.O.C.P value of 4000 MHz for 1.40v @ CL19-23-23-46 and then try to overclock them further to see how much free performance we can squeeze out of them.
As for the overclocking scenario, we managed to reach 4400 MHz with a small bump for the voltage from 1.40 to 1.45v and more importantly with the same stock latencies(!) but with only a small penalty in tRC 101 vs 83 stock XMP/DOCP. This is considered an even better overall result because that’s an ideal scenario when it comes to RAM, to increase the speed (MHz) without sacrificing on the looser timings front.
Also do note that in both stock and OC screenshots (and even in the BIOS), for some reason it registers the first sequence of the timings with a value of 20 instead of 19.
Then anything above 4600 MHz even with looser timings with our test sample needs way too much voltage to be considered safe for daily usage, hence why we stopped at 1.45v. This being said, we strongly 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.
The last point to mention here is that we have updated the bios for the motherboard to the latest stable final variant which is 1803 (from 25/01/2021) and the main testing game (Assassins Creed Valhalla) to its latest patch – thus our tests for today will only include the results versus only another competition kit, since we can’t reuse the results from the older graphs since those kits are no longer available to be retested.
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 1803
– 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
Software:
– OS: Windows 10 Pro x64 Version 20H2
– CPU-Z v1.95 – 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 – 465.89
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 a have a nice gradual increase with the OC scenario.
Next up is R20 which is a more modern up to date multi core benchmark suite. Again the OC FAYE kits scales really well and tops the chart.
Next up is the integrated memory benchmark from AIDA64 so we can inspect the overall read, write and copy bandwidth. Finally the BIOS update apparently solves our previous issues with higher latency despite the gains from an OC setting.
The last synthetic test comes from Geekbench which gives us an overall performance index for both single and multi core scores. The overall hierarchy is preserved here as well.
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 especially for the low 0.1% and 1% timeframes.
Conclusion
It’s really clear by now that Neo Forza knows how to make really good RAM kits and this FAYE one is no exception. We are highly pleased that we managed to see that these kits overclocked without sacrificing the timings and without volatile voltage numbers. These in a hand of an OC enthusiast should bring a lot of pleasant surprises while those airflow optimised aluminium heatsinks will definitely help in that regard. This is an easy one to mark since they tick a lot of boxes even if you are not an overclocker or you decide to experiment later, because the performance in stock form is more than plenty. Plus if you are after a stealthier build too, then these will fit that scenario with ease.
The good:
+ Very good out of the box performance
+ Great OC potential even with the stock latencies
+ Airflow optimised aluminium heatsinks
+ Lifetime Warranty
+ Perfect for a stealth build
The bad:
– Current availability
– The OC potential above 1.5v is minimal and too risky for daily usage without exotic cooling
– Very close in price to a 64GB 3200 MHz kit from the same FAYE line
Glob3trotters “Excellence” Award 4.5 out of 5
A lot of thanks to Neo Forza for supplying us with this kit !
