Thermaltake Toughram XG RGB 4000Mhz 16GB Memory Review

ASUS Maximux XII Hero – Z490 Chipset
Intel Core i9 10900k (3.7Ghz) Deca Core 10 x 32KB L2 Cache 10 x 256KB L3 Cache 20MB 
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme
1x nVidia RTX 2080 Super
Crucial  MX500 500GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 10 Pro 64bit 

Memory Tested
2x Thermaltake Toughram XG PC4-4000 16GB (19-23-23-42)

Reference Tested
2x GSKill TridentZ PC4-330000 8GB DDR4 (19-19-19-39)

Sandra is a software collection of synthetic benchmarks that will give us a basic idea as to what a system is capable of. It should be noted that SiSoft numbers change depending on what hardware is being tested.  These were recorded using Sandra Professional Version 31.14.2021.3

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined diagnostic and benchmarking software package designed to assist with overclocking and general system tuning.  The package also contains modules to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives in addition to normal stuff like stress testing and troubleshooting. 

Unigine is a synthetic benchmark much like 3DMark Vantage, but supports the newest of DirectX 11 technologies. The benchmark comes with lots of heavy tessellation and soft shadows to work the more flexible shaders found on DirectX 11 graphic cards. This makes this benchmark ideal for seeing exactly what a best case scenario might look like for a DirectX 11 capable GPU.

Benchmark Settings
HWBot Benchmark
DirectX 11 Presets
DirectX 9 Presets

SYSmark 25 is an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of Productivity, Creativity and Responsiveness. The new Productivity Scenario has updated workloads and applications geared towards office centric user activities. The new Creativity Scenario features updated workloads and applications geared toward media-centric user activities. The new Responsiveness Scenario models ‘pain points’ in the user experience. These common activities that include: application launches, file launches, web browsing with multiple tabs, multi-tasking, and background application installation.

PCMark 10 is an overall system benchmark to measure and compare PC performance using real-world tasks and applications. Similar to 3DMark this new version tests the entire system as a whole using applications that reflect typical PC use in the home and at the office.  This approach ensures that PCMark measures the things that matter, highlighting performance differences that will be apparent to end users and consumers.

When you are dealing with performance memory modules you basically have two modes to choose from.  You have the JEDEC mode which is the default and you get without any BIOS modifications.  This will offer your out of box performance and is likely how 80% of “gamers” are running their memory.

Enabling XMP is by far the fastest way to increase system performance and was the basis of this review. 

I found these modules to be extremely picky.  Enabling XMP went as you would expect however at first boot the system did 4 training resets before it found the right set of timings and was able to boot.  From there is system loaded normally and appeared to run fine.

The trouble started when I switched between my GSKill and Thermaltake modules.  Granted the timings are different and the general run of thumb is to reset XMP before swapping modules.  But, I was in a hurry and wouldn’t you know it going from GSKILL to TT caused the system to crash due to the more aggressive timings. 

A quick BIOS reset and everything worked. 

What was more interesting is that switching from TT to GSKILL had no impact and allowed the system to boot normally.  I had to do a hard reset to ensure the proper XMP timings were enabled but, this goes to show how narrow the performance window is with the Toughram XG modules.

Oh, and on top of that they are noticeably slower, have higher latency and offer zero overclocking, even lowering the CAS(CL) from 19 to 20 caused the system to crash and that should NEVER happen.