G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB used to break the world record for fastest memory

Why it matters to you

To the mainstream PC gamer, this is a good example of how G.Skill’s memory can be overclocked in a controlled environment, but don’t expect these speeds in a typical air/water-based setup.

On Wednesday, G.Skill International said that a team of professional overclockers managed to speed up its DDR4 memory to 5,500MHz, the fastest frequency (speed) to date. Conducted by Taiwan-based Toppc, the team used a system based on MSI’s X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard and an Intel Core i7-7740K processor. The team broke the 5GHz barrier last year using G.Skill’s DDR4 memory too.

“DDR4 5.5GHz has been our next target after we achieved DDR4 5GHz last year. We are extremely excited to finally make it happen together with Samsung components, MSI X299 motherboard, and Intel Core X-series processor,” says Tequila Huang, corporate vice president of G.Skill International.

As seen here, the record was validated by HWBOT. The team kept the processor and memory cooled using liquid nitrogen, meaning the average PC gamer won’t see the overclocked speed using standard air and water-based cooling. The overclocking record relied on a single 8GB stick of G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB DDR4 memory, which is sold as 8GB or 16GB sticks in kits of 16GB and more.

While the 5.5GHz number sounds awesome, the 8GB stick actually overclocked to 2,750MHz. But because modern memory sticks are designed to work in pairs (aka dual channel), the number is doubled to 5,500MHz. Toppc’s previous record was a single DDR4 stick clocked at 2,501MHz, breaking the 5GHz barrier for dual-channel memory.

According to the current HWBOT listing, the overclocked memory had a latency of CL14-14-14-34. That indicates the G.Skill memory stick ran at 1,500MHz or 1,600MHz before the overclocking process. The quad-core Intel “Kaby Lake-X” processor used in the test bed had a stock base speed of 4.30GHz, and a boost speed of 4.50GHz.

G.Skill introduced its Trident X RGB series at the end of 2016. As the name implies, these DDR4 sticks include RGB lighting that’s customizable through the company’s free desktop software. They include aluminum heat spreaders with a hair-line finish, and a fin-based design for better heat dissipation. Each stick consists of Samsung memory chips soldered on a 10-layer circuit board supporting overclocked speeds.

“We are seeing amazing overclocking potential for these newly released hardware and we believe that more overclocking benchmark records will be achieved very soon by professional overclockers worldwide,” Huang added.

Toppc initially broke the 5GHz speed barrier using a single G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 memory stick (4GB), MSI’s Z170I Gaming Pro AC mini-ITX motherboard, and a sixth-generation Intel Core i5-6600K processor slowed down to 968.17MHz (originally it runs at 3.50GHz).  The HWBOT info shows that the CPU was cooled by liquid nitrogen, and presumably the memory chip was as well to hit the overclocked 2,501.2MHz speed.

Then during Computex 2016, G.Skill memory was used to break Toppc’s record, hitting 2,594.6MHz (aka 5,189.2MHz). This speedy feat was accomplished by Splave, who used the ASRock Z170M OC Formula motherboard and a sixth-generation Intel Core i7-6700K processor. Splave walked away from G.Skill’s OC World Cup Competition with $10,000 and knowing that he achieved a new world record for memory speed. Guess it’s time for another attempt.