G.Skill hits an insanely fast 5GHz on an air-cooled RGB DDR4 memory kit

G.Skill is an active participant in the overclocking community, and to prove its mettle, the company sometimes takes matters into its own hands. Such is the case with a new feat that has never been done before—G.Skill took one of its dual-channel Trident Z RGB memory kits and cranked the dial to 5,000MHz, on air.

"Previously, the 5GHz memory speed is only achievable in extreme overclocking and in single-channel. We’re excited to share that we’ve been able to achieve the 5GHz memory speed in not only air-cooling conditions, but also in dual-channels. This is a major milestone for us," says Tequila Huang, corporate vice president, G.Skill International.

While achieving record-setting speeds while using liquid nitrogen is neat, it lacks real-world utility, as nobody's going to feed a steady stream of LN2 to their RAM for day-to-day use. It's impractical for a variety of reasons.

It's more interesting when a company can hit a record speed on air, as G.Skill has done. The next step would be to introduce a DDR4-5000 memory kit to market. That day will inevitably come, though G.Skill is not quite ready to introduce one.

"We will make every effort to bring this specification onto the consumer market, and bring the experience of extreme performance to worldwide users," Huang added.

Of course, higher frequency kits have limited utility even outside of exotic cooling—outside of benchmarking, you're not likely to notice a difference in performance between a DDR4-5000 kit and, say, a DDR4-4200 kit. Enthusiast kits also tend to carry a premium price. But for those who want the fastest and are willing to pay for the luxury, G.Skill is happy to oblige. The real question is, which company will get to 5,000MHz first, G.Skill or Corsair?

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).