G.Skill's latest memory kit pushes DDR4 speed boundary to 4700MHz

Records are meant to be broken, and G.Skill keeps smashing them with increasingly faster memory kits. It's latest offering is a new Trident Z RGB DDR4-4700 kit that is 100MHz faster than other memory kits on the market.

Nobody really needs a memory kit this fast, save for extreme overclockers who are chasing benchmark and frequency records. But these kinds of kits are as much about bragging rights as they are about performance.

To wit, G.Skill in September of last year launched a 16GB DDR4-4600 kit that at the time was the fastest around, and it noted that previously "the speed of DDR4-4600MHz was only achievable under extreme overclocking with liquid nitrogen cooling." Then less than a week later, Corsair joined the DDR4-4600 club with a high-speed 16GB kit of its own.

Pushing forward another 100MHz doesn't have much benefit in and of itself, though it does restore bragging rights to G.Skill as the lone supplier of the world's fastest memory kit.

The new DDR4-4700 kit is another 16GB offering (2x8GB) sporting Samsung B-die ICs that G.Skill hand screens. Timings are set at 19-19-19-39 at 1.45V. That's actually pretty impressive, as they're tighter than the 19-23-23-43 timings that G.Skill's DDR4-4600 is rated to run at, and the 9-26-26-45 timings found on Corsair's DDR4-4600 kit, both of which also require a higher voltage (1.5V).

"Designed for high-stability, this Trident Z RGB DDR4-4700MHz memory kit has proven itself through stress-testing on the MSI Z370I Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard and Intel Core i7-8700K processor," G.Skill says.

The new kit will be available in the second quarter of this year. G.Skill hasn't said how much it will cost, though as a point of reference, its non-RGB 16GB DDR4-4600 kits street for around $400.

Paul Lilly

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).