Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
Even from the box picture alone, I really appreciate the clean look of the Lexar Hades RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB kit. It is a bit strange they decided to name this memory kit after the name of the Greek underworld king, especially when you contrast this with how minimal and well-finished this kit is. The two sides are covered with a brushed black aluminum heatplate and a plastic translucent diffuser sits on top. With a medium height profile, the memory kit attracts a bit more attention with its lights turned on, but even the lighting is simple with just a straight bar down the top edge. The aluminum does cut away more in the middle of the memory sticks for more illumination from the side perspective. Otherwise, the aluminum sides are low weight but decent heat conductor. The heatsink and diffuser add approximately 1.5cm on top of your typical bare module. The taller height may affect your clearance issues under a CPU heatsink, but it is still relatively short.
Heatspreaders may be a marketing gimmick, but it is quite difficult to find high performance memory without any form of a heatspreader attached. They do serve a purpose in dispersing heat, but for most memory modules, this feature is not a requirement. The heatspreader design of the Lexar Hades RGB DDR4-3600 modules is symmetrical when looked at straight on and between the sides, which is logical as memory can be installed in different directions depending on your motherboard layout. Besides functional purposes, it also improves the look. The Lexar brand can be found in the middle of each side and engraved into the plastic diffuser on one edge. A specifications label is found on the other side of the module, with the model number LD4BU016G-H3600UN, frequency, CAS latency, and voltage. The Lexar Hades RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB's assembly location is in Taiwan.
From the photo above, you can see the Lexar Hades RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB has a black PCB that is sandwiched in the middle of the two heatspreader pieces. A plastic top piece sits above the two metal plates and are only connected to the aluminum sides with some sort of adhesive. These two sides are held onto the module itself by strips of thermally conductive adhesive and are not physically locked together. The adhesion force between the two heatspreaders and memory ICs is pretty strong, so I would recommend some sort of heat source if you do ever want to take them off. You can also see how the aluminum pieces are designed with them being mirror images of each other. Since the pieces are made from aluminum, it does not hold a lot of heat, therefore dissipating the heat energy relatively quickly into the surrounding environment. These pieces are pretty thin, but they still feel solid and should not easily bend. Either way, you will probably never remove the heatspreaders as most aftermarket CPU heatsinks should easily accommodate memory modules of this height profile.
A closer look at the memory chips on the Lexar Hades RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB dual channel memory kit. The photo above should be quite clear -- it says "PP059-062E" on each IC. These are SpecTek-manufactured chips, a company wholly owned by memory giant Micron, identified as PRN2G8Z32DD8JC-062E, with eight 2GB chips on one side only for a total of 16GB on each DIMM. These are the same chips found on the Patriot Viper Steel RGB DDR4-3200 2x16GB kit we reviewed earlier this year. As mentioned on the previous page, these RAM modules run at a frequency of DDR4-3600 with 18-22-22-42 latencies. These latencies are a bit higher than the competition, but we will see how they perform in just a moment. These modules operate at a stock voltage of 1.35V, which is right at the Intel maximum safe limit and AMD recommendation. Here are the listed features for the ICs, as obtained from SpecTek's website:
• VDD = VDDQ = 1.2V ±60mV•VPP = 2.5V, –125mV/+250mV
• On-die, internal, adjustable VREFDQ generation
• 1.2V pseudo open-drain I/O
• TC of 0°C to 95°C
– 64ms, 8192-cycle refresh up to 85°C
– 32ms, 8192-cycle refresh at >85°C to 95°C
• 16 internal banks (x4, x8): 4 groups of 4 banks each
• 8 internal banks (x16): 2 groups of 4 banks each
• 8n-bit prefetch architecture
• Programmable data strobe preambles
• Data strobe preamble training
• Command/Address latency (CAL)
• Multipurpose register READ and WRITE capability
• Write and read leveling
• Self refresh mode
• Low-power auto self refresh (LPASR)
• Temperature controlled refresh (TCR)
• Fine granularity refresh
• Self refresh abort
• Maximum power saving
• Output driver calibration
• Nominal, park, and dynamic on-die termination (ODT)
• Data bus inversion (DBI) for data bus
• Command/Address (CA) parity
• Databus write cyclic redundancy check (CRC)
• Per-DRAM addressability
• Connectivity test
• sPPR and hPPR modes
• JEDEC JESD-79-4 compliant
As you saw from the front of the box, the Lexar Hades RGB DDR4-3600 is compatible with all RGB lighting control software from major motherboard manufacturers such as ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, and ASRock, Lexar also provides their own software to control lighting in the form of Lexar RGB Sync. This is available from Lexar's website and is a small 3.3MB download. Lexar RGB Sync is pretty straightforward as it only changes the lighting settings on the Hades RGB. The left side shows all of the different lighting effects that are possible, while the right side shows different ways you can modify the selected effect. From here, you can also see there are a total of eight lights on each stick of the memory. Depending on the effect, you can pick the color, brightness, and speed of the effect. Some also allow for changing the direction of the effect. There is also the ability to create profiles to quickly swap between four different saved lighting modes. I think most people would prefer to use their motherboard software since it can integrate with other hardware, but I am glad Lexar provided one anyways.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X @ 3.6GHz
CPU Cooling: Cooler Master MasterAir MA624 Stealth
Motherboard: ASUS Prime X470-Pro
Graphics: MSI GeForce GTX 1070Ti Titanium
Chassis: Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact
Storage: Western Digital Blue SN500 NVMe SSD 500GB, OCZ ARC 100 240GB, Patriot P200 512GB
Power: Seasonic FOCUS Plus 850 Gold 850W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Lexar Hades RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB @ DDR4-3200 18-22-22-42
- Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3600 2x32GB @ DDR4-3600 16-18-18-38
- Ballistix Elite DDR4-4000 2x8GB @ DDR4-4000 18-19-19-39
- Ballistix Elite DDR4-4000 2x8GB @ DDR4-3600 16-16-16-38
- Gigabyte AORUS RGB Memory DDR4-3200 2x8GB @ DDR4-3200 16-18-18-38
- Patriot Viper Elite PC4-24000 2x8GB @ DDR4-3000 16-16-16-36
- Patriot Viper RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB @ DDR4-3600 17-19-19-39
- Patriot Viper Steel RGB DDR4-3200 2x16GB @ DDR4-3200 18-22-22-42
- Patriot Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-3600 2x8GB @ DDR4-3600 17-19-19-39
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 CPU
4. Benchmark: AIDA64 FPU
5. Benchmark: AIDA64 Memory
6. Benchmark: PCMark 10
7. Benchmark: 3DMark
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 10
9. Benchmark: SuperPI 1M, Cinebench R23
10. Overclocking and Conclusion
