A little bling on stuff that we buy never hurts but sadly this is the era of RGB where no matter what PC component you buy it is bound to have RGB lighting and in most cases its overdone badly. Thanks to some manufacturers who are keeping their distance from this trend and moving in the same direction cautiously and smartly, all is not lost. One such brand is ADATA and their product the ADATA XPG Dazzle Memory kits that come with a red pulsating LED strip fixed right on top of them!
Before I move forward I'd really like to thank the guys at ADATA India to be generous enough for lending me a sample for review today.
Coming in three frequencies ranges of 2400Mhz, 2800Mhz and 3000Mhz these kits come equipped with red LEDs on top of the headspreaders to impart a fresh and distinctive look. These are available only in DDR4 standards & are compatible with both, the dual-channel and quad-channel configurations. We have with us the 16GB (8x2) kit of 3000Mhz today which is priced in at $150 or Rs 11,000 in India and backed up by a Lifetime warranty period.
Some more details are revealed here where we can see that its a post production sample and no pre production gimmick is done here. Also the DRAM manufacturer is Samsung and there is only one enthusiast rated 3000Mhz XMP 2.0 profile present on the kit
Packing and Closer Look
Moving on from what we are used to from ADATA packing style, the XPG Dazzle comes in a solid cardboard box containing the RAM sticks inside a blister back. The front has every details enlisted and printed nicely including the capacity, number of sticks, frequency and also the 10 layer PCH feature and even a rendered image of the memory with a cut out at bottom to look at the actual memory stick resting inside!
The back is blank with just a QR code for easy product registration and free software download. So nothing much is going on over here just as we are now used to from ADATA packing, they all are nearly blank at the back.
Inside the clamp shell packing holds the two RAM sticks nice and tight. The clamp shell has space for four sticks so I presume that Adata is keeping the packing style generic for all the XPG Dazzle memory kits.
Looking at the actual memory sticks I'm really impressed by what the product looks and feels like in reality! Its a black and red kit with a sharply designed heat-sink that gives it a catchy look even with the LED turned off.
The back is identical to that of the front with a sticker enlisting all the technical specifications. Model number, rated frequency and voltage along with other details can be found on the sticker quite easily for personal reference.
Top end has the clear fiber glass strip covering the LEDs beneath it and softly extends downwards to both sides of the stick. A subtle touch is provided by the crisp red XPG logo printed on top of this strip placed right in the middle.
An all black PCB is there so this kit can go with almost all the builds of today since black is the predominant color for DIMM slots on motherboard from leading manufacturers. I would love to see a white PCB with a white heatsink from ADATA aswell in future based on the same design as that of the Dazzle.
Measuring in at 4.73cm in height they'll not be an issue of compatibility even with the beefiest of air coolers out there which is a great thing as again many new air coolers along with hybrid AIOs have started making their appearances in the market!
As per ADATA the PCB is what they call a 10 layer PCB with Thermal Conductive Technology, improving cooling performance for stable operation & also to improve the quality of signal transfer and maintaining great stability even if the system operates in high speeds or is taking on heavy multitasking. Not sure how true is that but as of now I'll take their words over here.
ADATA used a Samsung memory chip this time instead of the Hynix ones that we've seen on the 2400Mhz variant earlier. There are eight memory ICs on each side and are 500MB of capacity with a rating of 3000Mhz CL16 at 1.35v
Benchmarks and Overclocking
Installing and booting up into Windows was easy with the Adata XPG Dazzle DDR4, the LEDs even lit up red from the get go itself which follow a breathing mode like pattern maintaining a perfect sync with each other. I wish it was possible to have some control over the pattern of their blinking but sadly that's not possible!
Also I observed that these kits are a perfect fit with big air coolers such as the Noctua NH-D14 and fits in just right. It adds a ton of value to this kit for people who are into using CPU air coolers.
For the benchmarks we used the following test setup configuration --
CPU: Intel Core i7 7700K 4.2Ghz
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z270X Designare
RAM: ADATA XPG Dazzle 16GB DDR4 3000Mhz Memory Kit
Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX (Push Pull Configuration)
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti G1 Gaming 4GB OC
Storage: ADATA XPG SX950 240GB SSD
Power Supply: Corsair AX860i 860W 80+ Platinum
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit
By default the memory kit works at the default 2100Mhz but upon enabling the XMP 2.0 profile we hit a perfect 3000Mhz at 16-16-16-36-2T with 1.35v which is in match with the rated speed and timings. The system was perfectly stable and booted up properly with no hiccups whatsoever completing all the benchmarks flawlessly.
Now for overclocking I decided to tighten the timings at 3000Mhz itself and attained a stable 3000Mhz CL15 at 1.45v which is not bad for a 3000Mhz kit but what was surprising was that the kit manages a solid 3130Mhz CL17 at 1.5v but I don't advice using it at that voltage so for the benchmarks we'll be sticking to 3000Mhz CL15 only.
The Intel i7 7700K was kept at stock 4.2Ghz/4.5Ghz boost while the Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti G1 Gaming was at 1393Mhz on clock and 1752Ghz on the memory using the OCMode which is available out of the box.
AIDA64 Extreme Edition v5.75
AIDA64 implements a set of 64-bit benchmarks to measure how fast the computer performs various data processing tasks and mathematical calculations. Memory and cache benchmarks are available to analyze system RAM bandwidth and latency.
7-zip
This suite allows you to measure the performance of your computer. The benchmark shows a rating in MIPS (million instructions per second). There are two tests, compression with LZMA method and decompression with LZMA method. Once the total passes reaches 100, the score is taken. Higher the score better is the computer's overall performance.
SuperPi Mod 1.5
SuperPi is a simple program that utilizes the processing power and memory speed of the system to calculate the value of Pi upto 1 Million or 32 Million decimal point depending upon what you choose. The time is calculated in minutes and seconds, we'll take them both in seconds, so lower the score faster is your computer.
wPrime v2.10
wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions. It is influenced by memory timings and frequency.
Cinebench R15 and Cinebench R11.5
Cinebench uses Maxon's Cinema 4D engine to render a photo-realistic scene of some shiny balls and weird things (we miss the motorbike). The scene is highly complex, with reflections, ambient occlusion and procedural shaders so it gives a CPU a tough workout.
As Cinema 4D is a real-world application - used on films such as Spider-Man and Star Wars - Cinebench can be viewed as a real-world benchmark.
Intel XTU
Intel XTU is a utility mainly used to overclock the processor and memory to benchmark the system for its stability and performance. The score obtained is a projection of the computer's true potential signifying its performance in real-life tasks.
3DMark Fire Strike
Fire Strike by 3D Mark is a test suit that plays a cinematic scene to determine the FPS, GPU temperature and CPU temperature scaling everything via a cumulative score. It is a great tool to benchmark your GPU since the render is GPU dependent.
Crysis 3
I can't start gaming benchmarks without running my all time favorites Crysis 3 but its a game that no system loves! The CryEngine 3 behind this scenic beauty can bring down any system to its knees and I mean any system. I set everything to Ultra at 1920x1080 resolution with MSAA 4X and motion blur high.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
The latest installation of Lara Croft in the spectacular Rise of the Tomb Raider 2016 with stunning graphics and rich location makes it a great game to benchmark with while enjoying in the due course! We used DX11 and settings were at Ultimate on full HD resolution.
Batman Arkham Knight
Since the game is powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 3 and supports DX11 tessellation so playing this game on 1920x1080 resolution with all settings maxed out can be any modern system's 'worst nightmare'!
DOOM
Finally we've introduced this much awaited titled to our benchmarks! Developed by ID Software Doom or popularly written as DOOM is a reboot of the older Doom series. Its fast and scary with more than enough variety of guns that you can ever imagine or even use!
Its OpenGL and quality is set to Ultra.
The reason for choosing the above games is simply the fact that they've been proven to benefit from memory frequency and latency. So slight changes can be witnessed in the above gaming benchmarks with the lower latency of CL15 compared to the stock CL16 at the same 3000Mhz frequency.
Synthetic benchmarks even show variations especially graphic intensive suits like 3D Mark where performance is greatly affected by the memory.
My Verdict
The ADATA XPG Dazzle 16GB 3000Mhz memory kit is a decent offering coming in with a balanced set of features. The out of the box 3000Mhz frequency might not sound too exciting immediately but if we look at the subtle red LEDs that its comes with which pulsate slowly giving a soothing feel to the system along with the fact that its not a tall stick and is highly compatible with big beefy air coolers, then you can see that its quite a lucrative deal for quite a many people out there.
I recommend the ADATA XPG Dazzle 3000Mhz memory kit to everyone who's looking for the right balance of bling and performance and need something that is highly compatible with almost all the CPU coolers out there, gamers, studio owners and system modders arelikely to benefit from this kit the most.
I give it a 7/10 earning our Silver Award!
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