For several years TEAM GROUP has been releasing exciting products from liquid cooled M.2 SSDs to RGB SATA SSDs to really cool RAM kits. Today we are looking at their brand new XTREEM ARGB DDR4. These look absolutely stunning due to the clever design of using a mirror like plastic covered aluminium alloy heatsink which also lights up. These are not just for show, they use quality Samsung B-die IC chips that should give us some more headroom for tighter timings or higher OC numbers. Let’s dive in !
TeamGroup Inc. was founded in 1997 in Taiwan. TEAMGROUP Inc. possesses professional research and development capabilities, high quality products, rapid productivity, a tightly-knit global sales network and complete customer services. TEAMGROUP mainly produces its own brand of memory modules, memory cards, USB flash drives, solid state disks, peripheral series, mobile accessories and industrial applications. Gaming competitions have drawn worldwide attention in the recent years, so TEAMGROUP integrated its gaming memory modules into “T-FORCE” product line which is specifically designed for people who pursuit extreme high speed and excellent performance.
Prices and Availability
You have the option to select from up to three different frequency and timing option kits (3200, 3600 or 4000 MHz / CL14, CL16 or CL18). Given how good they look and they tick most of the boxes at least on paper, this makes the asking prices to be perceived as really good value for money.
Below you will find all of the available kits for now. Also on the main website we notice the presence of 32 GB kits but no word yet on release dates for those.
Presentation and Specification
*Courtesy of their website.*
They are quite the eye-grabber thanks to the full mirror reflection design which creates an incomparable RGB lighting effect. With colourful mirror design, the luminous memory allows the T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB to present the ultimate texture of optical technology.
Being just under 49 mm tall this should make them quite appealing for small form factor builds as well.
The presence of Samsung B-die ICs and the fact that they are made in Taiwan should make your purchasing decision even easier.
Visual Inspection and Installation
The box design goes hand in hand with the actual kits regarding the ability to catch your attention. Put these on a shelf in any computer store and you will notice them first thanks to the excellent visual depiction of the ARGB memory modules in full glory.
It’s very easy to recognise the T-Force branding which is on the top left corner while on the right one we have the product model from a specs sticker. Considering that one of the main attractions is the RGB light show, Team Group made sure they are compatible with virtually all of the software from all of the main motherboard vendors.
On the back we find out that they offer a lifetime warranty, then we get a quick intro about the company and a main product highlight.
Slide the top cover to reveal the main box for the memory modules which has the T-force logo in a bold and big font.
Here are the ARGB XTREEM memory modules safely secured in this transparent plastic clamshell.
As for the accessories you get a small booklet, a T-Force sticker and one microfibre cloth which you will need since these kits are a jewel but also a fingerprint magnet.
Also there is an empty RAM plastic tray underneath as this is the same packaging if they ever release 4 stick kits.
Finally, here they are ! They look so sleek and have this dark purple tint in natural light. The T-Force logo is present on the upper side while that chromed middle inlay has the product model.
On the back we have half of the total area covered in that mirror like plastic cover. Also here we have the sticker with the main specs like the product code, serial number, capacity, frequency and the timings. Our test sample is a 16 GB kit that can do out of the box the X.M.P / D.O.C.P profile of 3600 MHz with the CL18-22-22-42 timings for 1.35v.
The top side has the T-Force branding nicely displayed which of course will light up as well.
Now let’s install them and enjoy the rainbow !
Even on an ITX system, no problems at all regarding interference from the stock AMD Spire RGB CPU cooler.
They look absolutely stunning at night!
Testing methodology
We will employ a run of synthetic benchmarks at their stock X.M.P/D.O.C.P value of 3600 MHz for 1.35v. Then we will overclock them the easy way by just increasing the frequency while keeping the stock X.M.P/D.O.C.P profile. Here we managed to get 400 MHz extra free performance which is really good!
Finally we will tweak them to get the best manual overclock possible. Well, given the fact that they are using the best chips out there via Samsung B-die ICs, we managed to lower the timings (at 1.45v VDIMM and 1.08v for the SOC) for the same frequency and thus having CL14-15-15-35 1T; basically replicating the more expensive sister kit with the same specs. Above 4000 MHz the timings get a bit too loose to have any real gains.
Hardware used:
– CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 AM4 – 4c/8t @ 65W TDP
– CPU Cooler: AMR Ryzen Wraith Spire RGB
– Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-i Gaming mITX @ BIOS 0608
– Boot SSD: Crucial P2 500GB NVMe QLC
– Video card(s): ASUS GTX 1080 STRIX A8G
– PSU: Corsair SF750 SFX Platinum
– Case: Sahara P35 Tempered Glass Mid Tower PC Gaming Case
– Case fans 140 mm: Noiseblocker eLoop X-Series ARGB Black PWM – B14X-P 1500 RPM
– Case fans 120 mm: Noiseblocker eLoop X-Series ARGB Black PWM – B12X-P-BL 2000 RPM
Competition RAM:
– 16GB DDR4 Crucial Ballistix MAX RGB 4000 MHz CL18
– 16GB DDR4 T-Force Night Hawk RGB 3000 MHz CL16
– 16GB DDR4 G.Skill Trident Z RGB 3600 MHz CL18
Software:
– OS: Windows 10 Pro x64 Version 1909
– CPU-Z v1.92 – To verify the CPU’s and RAM’s statistics
– Aida64 Extreme v6.20 – Memory analysis and Benchmark suite
– Cinebench R15 – Popular CPU benchmark
– Cinebnech R20 – The new revised version optimised for the newer multi-core CPUs
– 3D/Game(s) – Assassin’s Creed Odyssey set at FHD, with everything at Max quality Settings, no V-Sync
– NVIDIA Drivers – 451.67
Testing, Results and Analysis
We start with the CPU intensive benchmark – Cinebench’s R15.
Here with the manual OC, we have almost identical results to the most performing kit in our charts, the Crucial Ballistix 4000 MHz, since it has just a bit tighter timings out of the box than the T-Force XTREEM. Also the D.O.C.P ‘OC’ works just as fine and it’s literally free performance over the stock settings with the least amount of tweaking.
We see a similar story in R20 and virtually the same hierarchy as the previous test, since this one scales even better with the newer multi-core CPUs and platforms.
Next up is the integrated memory benchmark from AIDA64 so we can inspect the overall read, write and copy bandwidth.
Since our testing CPU (4c/8t) doesn’t have that much L3 cache as the regular 3rd gen Ryzen CPUs, we don’t get good write numbers in this benchmark when compared to our previous 3700x (8c/16t). Nevertheless, the XTREEM kit still performs as in the previous benchmarks.
Now for a gaming session. We ran the integrated benchmark from AC: Odyssey at maximum quality settings.
Since this is such an intensive high core count and multitread CPU, our 4 core 8 threaded Ryzen 3 might not offer maximum performance so the RAM does show some improvements in the average FPS lumbers but with a better CPU we would have seen higher percentages.
Conclusion
Well then, we have another home run from Team Group with their new XTREEM ARGB RAM kits. They proved to respond very well to OC even with tighter timings. Then the fact that you can get +400 MHz free performance from just the stock profiles, is a new record for our RAM tests so far, which makes these highly sought after. Thus they are a complete package from value, performance, fun factor, impressive looks and quality. With no shadow of a doubt, they get our maximum mark!
The good:
+ Amazing performance
+ Samsung B-die ICs
+ Easy to get high extra performance out of the box
+ One of the best looking RAM kits out there
+ Compact as in not that tall so great for some SFF builds
+ They respond very well to overclocking
The bad:
– They need to release 32 (2×16), better yet a 64 GB (2×32) kits to satisfy the power hungry audience as well
Glob3trotters “Editor’s Choice” Award 5 out of 5
A lot of thanks to Team Group for supplying us with this epic kit !
