Regardless of brands and its
frequency, DRAM memory modules has always been one of the core components for a
system to be able to function. As the trend is shifting towards the aesthetics
of having all the fancy lightings in a PC, memory manufacturers has come up
with different variety of memory modules that comes with different colors of
LED to meet the end-user's demand.
The Apacer BLADE FIRE DDR4 we
have here today is the one of Apacer's gaming memory that comes with RED
colored LED, based on its non-LED counterpart, the Blade DDR4. Other than the
aesthetics offered, let's find out just what kind of performance this kit can
deliver - will it be a yay or nay?
Specification
Unboxing
At first glance, the BLADE
FIRE DDR4 ships in a pretty attractive package with a flaming Blade DDR4 and a
cutout window at the front for product showcase.
There's nothing much
interesting at the back of the package though. All you'll find here is some
brief description of the memory kit, i.e high frequency, low voltage, LED
lightings, etc.
Design wise, the BLADE FIRE
DDR4 looks pretty much the same as the Blade DDR4. As its name suggests, we can
see a blade like design on the saber-shaped heat spreader which Apacer boats of
its excellent heat dissipation.
The part that differentiate
the BLADE FIRE DDR4 from its non-LED counterpart is the red translucent bar for
the red LED lightings. The aluminum bar as seen on the Blade DDR4 has been
replaced with the red translucent bar for the LED lightings. It's pretty
obvious that it will definitely have an effect on the heat dissipation, but
that's the sacrifice you'll have to make for sake of the aesthetics.
LED
Demonstration
As the LED on the BLADE FIRE
DDR4 is red in color, it'll make a good match for those of you who has a system
with red-black theme.
System
Setup
Test Rig Configuration:
CPU Cooler: XSPC AX240 Ion
Pro Water Cooling Kit
CPU: Intel Core i7 7700K
@4.6GHz
Motherboard: MSI Z270 Gaming
M7
Memory: Apacer BLADE FIRE
DDR4 8GB
Primary Hard Drive: Apacer
Armor AS682 480GB
Power Supply: Be Quiet!
Straight Power 10 600W
Chassis: Cooler Master Test
Bench V1.0
Synthethic
Benchmark
Running the system without
enabling the XMP profile doesn't land us on the 2133MHz that we're familiar
with, but instead, a 2400MHz on default. Enabling the XMP will get you straight
to 3000MHz without any adjustment to the memory timings and relevant voltage.
We have compared the
performance via synthetic benchmark, Cinebench R15, there are noticeable
improvement in the score with the memory frequency raised from 2400MHz to
3000MHz.
Other than Cinebench R15, the
performance improvement can be seen via MaxxMEM as well. With memory-copy
(22.22%) and memory-read (17.35%) showing the most significant result from that
extra 600MHz boost on the memory frequency.
WinRAR is one of the most
used data compression tool similar to WinZIP, 7zip. In case if some of you
didn't notice this, WinRAR comes with a built-in benchmark tool for the
enthusiasts to monitor their system performance. From 2400MHz to 3000MHz, we
can notice that the the performancce score has improved by 15.5%.
Games
Benchmark
While there are reviews that
shows higher frequency memory kit gives only a minimal impact to games, the
numbers you're seeing there aren't actually telling the whole story. Not for
what we've observed with DDR4 memory kit of course.
We ran a couple of tests on
few selected titles to capture the data we need to show you how higher
frequency memory kit affect your games:
While the result might not be
showing a very big boost in terms of the average FPS, we can actually see that
the Minimum FPS is doing better when the its running on 3000MHz. For games that
requires you to move around and changing direction of your view in a fast pace,
higher frequency memory definitely helps to reduce the FPS fluctuation to
ensure smoother gameplay.
Overclocking
Moving on with the overclocking,
we manage to push the BLADE FIRE DDR4 to 3466MHz without adjusting any of the
memory secondary timings. 3600MHz is possible, but due to the limitation of our
CPU here, we weren't able to get it stable enough to survive through the
benchmarks we've run for this review.
As we never raised the CPU
frequency throughout the test, we can notice that the performance numbers
started to increase in a slower pace even though we have been constantly
raising the memory frequency.
Final
Thoughts
To be honest, we're a little
skeptical when we first unboxed the BLADE FIRE DDR4 but turns out that we're
wrong on that.
The BLADE FIRE DDR4 managed
to went beyond its 3000MHz as rated on its XMP to 3466MHz without requiring any
adjustsments to its secondary timing. As mentioned earier, we managed to push
it a little further to 3600MHz without any adjustments to the secondary timing,
but it wasn't able to survive all of the test that we've done for this review
due to the limitation of our CPU.
If you're looking for a good
looking DDR4 memory kit that doesn't comes with just the appearance, the BLADE
FIRE DDR4 will definitely not disappoint you with the performance it can
deliver.
*Disclosure: An important note, we are just sharing this information to the public, provided by our source. Apacer - Info / Logos / Photos / Images has respective copyrights.
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