TeamGroup Dark Z 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 Gaming Memory Review

With the focus on the RGB everything movement sometimes you must go back to your roots with something that is clean, sleek, and has no RGB. TeamGroup has taken that approach with their Dark Z Gaming memory which does away with the RGB and instead keeps it simple with a silver armored design that not only looks great but thanks to aluminum heat-sink also keeps your memory cool. Additional features of the Dark Z include selected high-quality IC, XMP 2.0 support, ultra-low working voltage, and support for AMD/Intel motherboards. Thanks to the exclusion of RGB the Dark Z comes in at affordable an price point of 73.99 to 79.99 with speeds ranging from 3000Mhz to 3600Mhz for a 16GB kit. We would like to thank TeamGroup for sending us the Dark Z kit to review. About TeamGroup Team Group Inc. was founded in 1997 in Taiwan and is one of the leading memory storage manufacturers in the world. They provide a variety of products such as Memory, Solid State Drives, SD Cards, USB drives, and mobile accessories. With their professional research and development teams, it allows them to produce high-quality and innovative products. TeamGroup also well praised by the industry and customers by adhering to the corporate philosophy of “Integrity, Innovation, Professionalism, Efficiency, Discipline, and Simplicity.” Features and Specifications Technical Specifications: Module Type 288 Pin Unbuffered DIMM Non-ECC Capacity 8GB / 16GB / 32GB / 8GBx2 / 16GBx2 / 32GBx2 Frequency 2666 3000 3200 3600 Data Transfer Bandwidth 21,328 MB/s 24,000 MB/s 25,600 MB/s 28,800 MB/s (PC4 21300) (PC4 24000) (PC4 25600) (PC4 28800) Latency CL15-17-17-35 CL16-18-18-38 CL16-18-18-38 CL18-22-22-42 CL16-18-18-38 CL16-20-20-40 Voltage 1.2V 1.35V Dimensions 43.5(H) x 141(L) x 8.3(W)mm Heat Spreader Aluminum heat spreader Warranty Lifetime warranty A Closer Look Like most of TeamGroup’s memory offerings, the Dark Z arrives in a plastic shell casing which securing holds the Dark Z modules. After opening the package in addition to the two 8GB Dark Z memory modules also included is a warranty booklet and T-Force case badge. The Dark Z’s come with a matte grey aluminum heat sink which has some debossed areas giving it an armored look. In the center of the module is a metallic T-Force logo which is accompanied by Dark Z written in the lower right corner. Flipping to the back of the module we find the same debossed areas from the front with the addition of a warranty sticker. Taking a closer look at the sticker we can see our modules are 8GB each with timings of CL 18-22-22-42 running at 1.35V. Moving to the top of the Dark Z, the armored look is continued with fin-like cutouts along the top and in the center we find some subtle branding with T-FORCE written in white. Overall, I like the aesthetic TeamGroup took with the Dark Z’s and with its clean design it should easily match most build themes. System Installation & Performance Testing The test system we are using to benchmark our 2 x 8GB Dark Z memory kit is: Open Test Bench Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro Motherboard Intel 9900K Processor at Stock Corsair H115i Platinum MSI RTX 2060 Super Gaming Z GPU Corsair HX750 PSU Microsoft Windows 10 Professional For testing, we benchmarked with the following pieces of software: CPU-Z AIDA64 Extreme Edition Passmark Performance Test SiSoft Sandra 7-Zip Super Pi Modded 1.5 7-Zip "This form allows you to measure the performance of your computer. The benchmark shows a rating of MIPS (million instructions per second). The rating value is calculated from the measured speed, and it is normalized with the results of Intel Core 2 CPU with multi-threading option switched off. So if you have a modern CPU from Intel or AMD, rating values in single-thread mode must be close to real CPU frequency. There are two tests: compression with the LZMA method and decompression with the LZMA method. Once the total passes reach 100, the score is taken.” In 7-Zip like other TeamGroup modules we have reviewed we find the Dark Z on the lower part of the chart with a score of 64017. AIDA64 Engineer Edition “AIDA64 Engineer has a hardware detection engine unrivaled in its class. It provides detailed information about installed software and offers diagnostic functions and support for overclocking. As it is monitoring sensors in real-time, it can gather accurate voltage, temperature, and fan speed readings, while its diagnostic functions help detect and prevent hardware issues. It also offers a couple of benchmarks for measuring the performance of individual hardware components or the whole system. It is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit Windows editions, including Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016.” In AIDA64’s bandwidth test, the Dark Z’s do extremely well being pretty much tied for 2nd spot. In the AIDA latency benchmark, the Dark Z crushes the competition when an extremely fast 45.2ns. Passmark Performance Test - Memory Mark - Threaded “Fast, easy to use, PC speed testing and benchmarking. PassMark PerformanceTest ™ allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers.” In the Passmark benchmark, like the Xtreem ARGB the Dark Z did not favor well in this benchmark. We did run the benchmark multiple times with fresh reboots but the ending result was the same. SiSoft Sandra “SiSoftware Sandra provides a robust package of diagnostic tools for testing your system and teasing out its problems--or potential headaches.” In SiSoft, we find the Dark Z in the top end of this chart with scores of 30.6/30.53/30.68 in aggregate/integer/float. Super Pi Modded 1.5 “On August 1995, the calculation of pi up to 4,294,960,000 decimal digits was succeeded by using a supercomputer at the University of Tokyo. The program was written by D.Takahashi in collaboration with Dr.Y.Kanada at the computer center. This record should be the current world record. (Details are shown in the windows help.) This record-breaking program was ported to personal computer environments such as Windows NT and Windows 95. In order to calculate 33.55 million digits, it takes 3 days with a Pentium 90 MHz, 40 MB main memory and 340 MB available storage.” Dark Z excelled in SuperPi finishing with an extremely fast time of 7 minutes and 1 second. Overclocking Now with the stock benchmarks completed, let us see how far we can overclock the Dark Z memory kit. At stock, this kit runs at a speed of 3600MHz at a voltage of 1.35v with CL18-22-22-42 timings. Overclocking the Dark Z’s was easy and we were able to achieve a 133MHz boost in speed to 3733MHz at its default voltage. We did try raising the voltage to 1.50v to try for a higher clock but our system refused to post. What we were able to do was tighten the timings a little to CL 16-19-19-38 timings. With the overclock applied we saw improvements across the board with performance increases of 4.3/4.8/1.8 percent in read/write/copy as well as an improved latency of 44.6ns. Re-running the SuperPi benchmark with the new timings we were able to shave off an incredible 8 seconds with a final score of 6 minutes and 53 seconds. Final Thoughts and Conclusion Having personally becoming fatigued with all the RGB, is nice to see companies like TeamGroup catering to people just looking for great-looking hardware that performs well. The Dark Z’s did just that with their sleek matte grey heat-sink and great performance in many of our benchmarks. Except for a few tests, the Dark Z’s found itself near or at the top of many of the charts and we were quite impressed with its snappy 45.0ns latency. If you want to get even more out of the Dark Z’s we were able to push them to 3733MHz with improved timings of CL 16-19-19-38. This resulted in improvements across the board with increases of 4.3/4.8/1.8 percent in read/write/copy as well as an improved latency of 44.6ns. All this was done with its default voltage which makes overclocking them a breeze. Overall the Dark Z’s from TeamGroup is a solid kit that has a great balance of affordability, performance, and aesthetics that would be an asset in any build. Great Job, TeamGroup!

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