Have you ever wondered how much RAM speed actually matters? Well, we have, and in this article we are reviewing two types of 3600MHz RAM from Klevv and comparing them to 3000MHz RAM from Corsair to see if it gives any benefit to go for faster sticks.
Let me cover the differences of Klevv RAM:
First we have KLEVV BOLT X that has a very minimalistic and simple design with matte surface, it is fairly slim so will be a good match for people who prefer simplicity or just have a closed case.
The complete opposite of the spectrum is this CRAS X RGB version. Armed with addressable RGB, it has a pretty cool artistic look that comes to life with RGB waves as soon as the PC gets switched on.
These come in two speeds: 3200MHz and 3600MHz. The latter is using Hynix DJR chip which is supposed to have plenty of headroom for overclocking. Let us know if you would like an in-depth overclocking review for that in the future.
Other than lighting, they are using identical chips so essentially it is a matter of preference. Do bear in mind that RGB type is almost 2cm taller and may interfere with some of the coolers. I personally prefer the RGB variant and love that it works out of the box without any additional software installation, at least on our ASUS board – simply plug it in and Asus armoury automatically picks up the update. After a quick restart it works just like any other device.
We have done some tests and will cover the standard synthetic benchmarking, throw in some creative workloads with rendering times and also gaming as this is where the faster RAM should shine the most. But first let me talk you through our test bench.
We ran these tests on Ryzen 9 3900XT with: ASUS B550 motherboard ASUS 2080 Super graphics card KLEVV NVME SSD And BeQuiet Pure Rock 2 cooler inside a BeQuiet 500DX case.
By the way we have a review coming up for this case, make sure to come back for that.
We are testing both Klevv sticks against Corsair LPX 3000MHz. Do note Corsair sticks are 16GB each in comparison to 8GB sticks from Klevv, but size should have little to no difference in these applications. As to the settings, we are using Stock CPU settings and enabling DOCP which is the default overclock profile for the RAM, bringing it to the advertised speed.
A thing to note, when talking about effective speed of RAM it is important to also consider the CAS Latency. This is a delay in between RAM receiving commands and actually being able to respond. In some cases really fast RAM with high latency might be performing worse than slower RAM with low latency. We can look at it like a train that goes really fast but also has to stop at each station for 10 minutes versus a train traveling at moderate speed but carrying out stops in under 5 minutes. So you want to get a balance between the two.
First up we have Cinebench R20. In a single core test as you can see from the results, there is almost no difference across all three of them. Not a great start here.
When we look at the multicore test, we actually see the Corsair RAM delivering a slightly better result.This is likely caused by faster timings on the memory.
Next we check the MaxxMem benchmark which focuses on memory bandwidth and here in read speeds we have about 4% improvement in comparison to Corsair RAM.
When jumping on to the Write speeds we see a much greater difference. In this scenario the difference between 3000MHz and 3600Mhz is a whopping 17%.
Lastly, copy speeds – they remain within a margin of error between all variants.
Next up we have Handbrake test and here we see both types of RAM are delivering similar results at 1080p and 4k resolutions. In this example, the bottleneck is the CPU so faster RAM bears no real difference.
Let’s have a look at the gaming results. For this we tested the games at 1080p and maxed out the graphical settings.
Starting with Total War Three Kingdoms. Here Klevv RAM is performing about 2.6 – 2.9% better on average score and 3.5 – 4.5% better on the 1 percentile, depending which RAM stick you’re looking at. When analysing this further, we found that while using Corsair RAM, the GPU was jumping between 93 and 98% utilisation and when using KLEVV memory it was locked at 99% which just shows that with faster memory we are able to fully saturate the graphics card.
In Shadow of The Tomb Raider we see a 3% difference in average frame rates and 3 – 4.5% when it comes to 1 percentiles. Using both, Corsair and Klevv RAM, the GPU was essentially maxed out, but on the latter it was also hitting power limits which is clear that it is pushing just a little bit harder.
Next up is Formula1 and here it gets very interesting. There is 3.4 – 4.9% improvement in average frames which is consistent with previous tests but also there is 4.4 – 8.9% improvement on 1 percentiles and this is actually a really significant improvement. When digging deeper we find GPU jumping between 88% and 98% on the Corsair RAM and between 92% and 97% on the Klevv RAM.
Lastly Doom Eternal – and here we have almost identical scores between Corsair and non RGB Klevv sticks. However – Cras X RGB has a 5% improvement on average FPS and 4.5% on a 1 percentile.
When looking really closely at the results it is very interesting to see that even though both Klevv RAM types have the same memory chips, they do still deliver slightly different results. In some cases the non-RGB version is better and in others the RGB version takes a slight lead.
This is probably due to tolerances in manufacturing. Ultimately devices need to deliver the level they are advertised as – but then beyond that, they can vary by a few percent.
So what is our conclusion for this Klevv RAM?
In general tests that we did in the beginning of the video we found that faster speeds may have little to no impact. But when it comes to gaming there is a consistent trend with improvement on both – average frame rates and more importantly the 1 percentiles. This is where the most perceived difference could be, especially in very fast paced games.
When using Ryzen 3000 series you should really be aiming for speeds of 3600 to utilise the perfect 1:1:1 infinity fabric ratio which in turn will maximise your CPU efficiency.
I would generally not advise people to upgrade their existing RAM with speeds of around 3000, but for people building new system – the advice would be to aim for RAM with speeds of 3600 and lowest possible timings. As to the amount of RAM – unless you are doing 4k video editing 16GB of RAM is plenty.
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