G.SKILL Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 CAS 14 AMD Ryzen Memory Review

Stylish, Ultra Low Latency RAM with Samsung B-die Goodness

In this age of product availability woes, when certain processors and (especially) graphics cards can’t be found anywhere near their MSRP unless you win a lottery or patiently wait in an online queue, at least memory is readily available. And while RAM might not be as desirable as that GPU you’ve had your eye on, the kit we have for your inspection today is actually pretty exciting in its own right. (Sadly, as of today it also appears to be unavailable for purchase beyond inflated 3rd party sellers. Let’s hope that changes.)

Ultra-low latency memory has always fascinated me for some reason, and when you combine an effective speed of 3600 MHz with timings of 14-15-15-35 (!) you’ve reached another level. And all of this is without any manual overclocking or timings manipulation. Yes, the G.Skill Trident Z Neo kit we have for review has these very aggressive settings programmed in via XMP profile – even on Ryzen. You might be thinking “Samsung B-Die”, and you’d be right (go ahead and enter the SKU F4-3600C14D-32GTZN into the handy B-Die Finder here).

Outside of synthetic benchmarks, those of us on Intel systems probably won’t see as much of an impact moving up from, say, DDR4-3200 CL16 to DDR4-3600 CL14 RAM like this – depending on the application. But we are living in the Ryzen era of PC enthusiast desktop, and here 3600 MHz – when coupled with an 1800 MHz FCLK – makes an appreciable difference for Zen-based CPUs. So it made sense to test the kit we received on an X570 motherboard, and I crossed my fingers that manual OC intervention wouldn’t be required (spoiler: it wasn’t).

The Kit

If you’ve been building systems over the past two decades you’ll be very familiar with G.Skill, which offers a fantastic mix of low cost and high quality for budget-minded DIY enthusiasts, offers ultra high-end models with premium prices to match, and even ends up in ultra high-end prebuilt systems like the Falcon Northwest Talon we looked at last year. I’ve purchased and used G.Skill memory for various projects over the years, but the Trident Z Neo is a step (or two) above.

This looks every bit a premium kit, with stylish heat spreaders and – of course – RGB lighting effects onboard. Here are the features of this series from G.Skill:

• Dual-Tone Design – Designed with a contrast of black brushed aluminum and powder-coated silver, the Trident Z Neo dual-toned heatspreader adds power and boldness to your next-gen build
• Sleek Beveled Edge – Inspired by the racing stripes of sports cars and supercars, Trident Z Neo features a beveled edge along the top of the signature tri-fin design with the asymmetrical slant to achieve a sleek and clean look
• Powerful Overclocked Performance – Crafted with hand-screened memory ICs and custom 10-layer PCBs, each and every module is made for maintaining the best signal integrity to achieve fast overclocking performance
• Platform Compatibility – Tested across a wide range of motherboards to strict quality standards, Trident Z Neo memory kits are built for reliability, stability, and compatibility
• Light It Up With RGB Software – Fully control and customize the 8-zone RGB lighting through the downloadable Trident Z Lighting Control software
• Sync Up with System Lighting – Want to sync up your system lighting? You can use Asus Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light, or ASRock Polychrome Sync software to personalize the colors and effects of your Trident Z Neo memory and compatible motherboards

This particular dual-channel 32GB kit carries the SKU F4-3600C14D-32GTZN, and a quad-DIMM 32GB kit (F4-3600C14Q-32GTZNB) is also available for your memory interleaving needs. Other kits with this combination of speed/timings are also available in 16GB and 64GB capacities.

Hardware Evaluation

The G.Skill Triden Z Neo kit we received is rated at DDR4-3600 14-15-15-35 @ 1.45V. That’s quite a bit of voltage, as we generally see performance DDR4 kits at 1.35V, but it’s needed to run at such low latency.

The kit can easily be run at 3600 CL16 at 1.35V, if desired (nominally this kit is JEDEC 2133 MHz CL15 @ 1.20V). For a more in-depth look at the makeup of this kit I ran Thaiphoon Burner, with the following result:

Ah yes, that Samsung B-Die goodness.

Since I am not testing other 3600 MHz kits in this review, just take the following as more a performance validation for the Trident Z Neo, and less of a serious memory benchmarking comparison. Processor FCLK becomes a performance factor between DDR4-3200 and DDR4-3600, as well.

In the mix will be a Crucial kit reviewed here run in both a “baseline” 16GB dual-channel DDR4-2400 16-16-16-39 @ 1.2V, which is the out-of-box state with no OC, and then run at the XMP profile (via DOCP on our ASUS X570 board) DDR4-3200 16-18-18-36 @ 1.35V, and finally a G.Skill Flare X kit run at the rated DDR4-3200 14-15-15-35 @ 1.35V. All memory was tested at a command rate of 1T, with CPU FCLK left to auto (1600 MHz for the 3200 kits, 1800 MHz for the 3600).

The following results won’t break any new ground, showing the usual scaling that incremental increases in memory speeds can provide.

While frequency is the biggest factor, and here obviously the Trident Z Neo is the only 3600 MHz kit tested, latency also affects the results. The other ultra-low latency kit tested – the CL14 G.Skill Flare X – did perform measurably better overall than the CL16 kit at 3200 MHz.

Final Thoughts

G.Skill’s Triden Z Neo is very impressive, with great performance and effortless setup on our X570 motherboard. And it looks fantastic, too. That last part is subjective, naturally, but I really like the Trident Z memory aesthetics (I have a Trident Z RGB kit for my personal system), and I prefer the silver and brushed aluminum finish of the Neo to the mirror-finish G.Skill Royal series.

The specific kit we received is part a larger family, with only the highest-end Trident Z Neo SKUs rated for CAS latency of just 14 at DDR4-3600 like this. Going that low in the latency department is quite pricey – though you’re also paying for premium Samsung ICs that are tested to work properly on AMD platforms at these speeds/latencies. B-die has a great reputation, and deservedly so. I’ve had zero compatibility issue running Samsung B-die memory on AMD Ryzen motherboards, with the Flare X my previous go-to kit from G.Skill (also Samsung B-die).

Back to pricing, the cost of this particular SKU is up there. Just as any high-end enthusiast part is going to command a premium, these Trident Z Neo kits are priced well above your basic DDR4 DIMMs as the kit we looked at here is in the $299 range from what I can tell, but as I mentioned at the top it’s not currently in stock anywhere that I can find. On the other hand Trident Z Neo RAM is offered in frequency/latency/capacity combinations ranging from $99 all the way up to $1399, so there’s an available SKU for just about any need.

If you’re on an AMD platform it’s great to see memory products like the Trident Z Neo from G.Skill specifically naming AMD Ryzen on the box (“engineered and optimized for full compatibility on the latest AMD Ryzen platforms…”), and in my time with this kit the memory experience on Ryzen doesn’t get any better than this. Being able to simply set the XMP equivalent and have full speed and proper timings (take that, gear-down mode) was a refreshing change from some other experiences I’ve had in the recent past.

Bottom line: the G.Skill Trident Z Neo kit we looked at today is an ultra-fast, effortlessly-compatible option for AMD Ryzen systems. It offers ridiculously low latency for memory this fast, is equipped with the Holy Grail of ICs from Samsung, and looks fantastic. Highly recommended.