Team Group Vulcan Gold 2400MHz 8GB Memory Kit Review

2400MHz memory seems to be kicking 2133MHz kits out of the 'price-vs-speed' sweet spot. Today we take a look at an 8GB 2400MHz CL11 kit from Team Group. Is the Vulcan set of memory worth its sub-£70 asking price? While the 3GHz+ Hynix MFR-based memory kits may have been grabbing most of the headlines in recent months, 2133MHz and 2400MHz sets still make up the bread-and-butter of the enthusiast and gamer memory markets. Past 2400MHz prices start to rise out of proportion with frequency, so many gamers refuse to pay the added fee. For that reason 2133MHz and 2400MHz are the new sweet spots for performance memory. Available in both eight and sixteen gigabyte capacities, can Team Group's Vulcan Gold 2400MHz kit prove that its value-orientated approach to a high-speed set of memory can please gamers and enthusiasts? Specifications: PC3-19200 (2400MHz). Timings: 11-13-13-35. Voltage: 1.65V. Dual Channel Kit: (2x4GB). XMP V1.3 Ready. Lifetime Warranty. Team Group ships the Vulcan Gold memory in basic packaging which shows off the modules' exuberant colour scheme. Rather than take the frustrating clamshell approach, Team Group uses a simple cardboard container which can be ripped away to provide easy access to the modules. Speed, kit capacity, timings, and part number are outlined on a sticker on the packaging's top-right corner. The Team Group Vulcan Gold memory sticks are covered by a lightweight, gold-coloured heatsink. While the choice of colour may have been dubious in past eras, Asus's new motherboards have made sure that memory manufacturers have more choice in the appearance department. If gold is not to your taste, orange-, blue- or red-stripped versions are also available. Building on the appearance note, Team Group has taken the wise decision to opt for a black PCB over the ugly green alternative. Yes, the PCB is barely noticeable when the memory is installed in a board but, for me personally, I still prefer to cast my eyes on subtle hints of black, rather than green. Many people will agree. A sticker on the back of each DIMM outlines the module's speed, capacity, timings, voltage, and serial number. The 8GB kit on show today consists of a pair of 4GB DIMMs which feature memory chips on one side of the PCB and a spacer on the other. A 16GB kit which utilises two 8GB modules is also available. Intermittent openings in the heatsink give a glimpse at the underlying black PCB. They also look to act as holes through which airflow can access the memory chips. Measuring in at 31mm-tall, Team Group all but eliminates CPU cooler interference problems by using an insignificant 1mm more than a bare memory module. While I am a fan of the aesthetic appeal that tall heatsinks, such as G.Skill's RipjawsX variant, gives a memory kit, function typically wins out over form when I'm the one purchasing. By that logic, the interference-free design of Team Group's Vulcan heatsinks would appeal to me thanks to their ability to fit underneath large CPU coolers, such as be quiet!'s Dark Rock Pro 3. And with a kit that is not designed for heavy overclocking or sub-zero benching, a large heatsink is not necessarily required. Not at 1.65V, at least. We are using the ASRock Z87 OC Formula motherboard to test today's memory kit. It supports RAM from many manufacturers and gives us a large amount of flexibility to tinker with memory multiplier, base clock and timings settings. It has also reached the highest DRAM frequency of all the Z87 motherboards that we have tested. Our full review of the ASRock Z87 OC Formula motherboard can be read here. The fully-functioning XMP profile configured the memory kit for use at its 2400MHz frequency and correct timings. Windows and CPU-Z registered the memory's functioning settings as correct. Our system's CPU-Z validation running at a 2400MHz DRAM frequency can be found here. We are using an Intel Core i7 4770K processor with an ASRock Z87 OC Formula motherboard. The memory kit's stock speed is: 2400MHz 11-13-13-35 @ 1.65V Note: CPU and CPU Cache frequencies for the Avexir Core Extreme Series 3000MHz and ADATA XPG V2 3100MHz memory sets are different to the speeds set for the comparisons kits. This is due to the Avexir and ADATA memory’s use of out-of-spec BCLK frequencies which then result in non-standard CPU and CPU Cache speeds. Due to this fact, the results and charts should be viewed with care, and our performance analysis should be read to make the results clearer. Z87 Test System: Processor: Intel Core i7 4770K Retail @ stock (3.9GHz multi-core turbo). Motherboard: ASRock Z87 OC Formula Graphics Card: nVidia GTX 760 2GB. System Drive: 500GB Samsung 840 Series SSD. CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3. Case: NZXT Phantom 630. Power Supply: Seasonic Platinum 1000W. Operating System: Windows 7 Professional with SP1 64-bit. Comparison memory: 8GB (2x 4GB) Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133MHz (11-11-11-30). 16GB (2x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz (10-12-12-31). 8GB (2x 4GB) ADATA XPG V2 2800MHz (12-14-14-36). 8GB (2x 4GB) Avexir Core Extreme Series 3000MHz (12-14-14-35). 8GB (2x 4GB) ADATA XPG V2 3100MHz (12-14-14-36). 8GB (2x 4GB) Kingston HyperX Predator 2800MHz (12-14-14-32). Software: MaxxMem 2. SiSoft Sandra 2013. Super Pi. Cinebench R11.5 64 bit. SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting. It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc. Native ports for all major operating systems are available: Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86) Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64) Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64) Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01) Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02) All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of: SMP – Multi-Processor MC – Multi-Core SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86 IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit Team Group's 2400MHz CL11 RAM kit shows consistent performance in Sandra's set of memory-intensive benchmarks. Bandwidth numbers for the Vulcan Gold kit are slightly behind Patriot's lower latency 2133MHz set, although they are above those set by the high-frequency, loose timings Hynix-based overclocking kits. Latency for the 2400MHz CL11 Team Group set of memory trails the CL10 Corsair kit by a small margin. Latency performance is where the 2400MHz modules cannot compete with the higher-speed overclocking-geared memory kits. MaxxMem2 PreView is a handy, free program to rate memory performance. It can be downloaded over here. Team Group's 8GB 2400MHz kit puts up a mid-table performance for Maxxmem 2 bandwidth numbers. Latency performance is again trailing to the higher-speed kits, although Patriot's 2133MHz set, exhibiting a 5% performance deficit, cannot keep pace with the Vulcan modules. CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all - it’s completely free. Grouping for the Cinebench R11.5 benchmark is particularly tight between all memory kits. Our testing with the Team Group Vulcan memory kit showed a small performance deficit against some of the other sets. The margin of error and precision of Cinebench's test procedure could have an effect on the relevance of the result. Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 2 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU. We used Super Pi’s ’16M’ benchmark setting. Super Pi gave the Team Group memory kit a one second deficit against the comparison products in our chart. Super Pi is known for reacting to memory frequency and timings, so the mixture of increased latency or reduced speeds, in comparison to other kits, may be to blame for the Vulcan kit's one second deficit. With memory modules of this caliber, it is fair to assume that a large proportion of the user base will be looking for a quick and easy overclock. That means that users are unlikely to tweak parameters in an attempt to gain every single megahertz, but they will be likely to test the kit's stability at higher memory dividers. We will be using our ASRock Z87 OC Formula motherboard's memory dividers to overclock the Team Group Vulcan Gold modules. Super Pi 16M will be used to verify stability and Maxxmem will highlight potential performance gains. Hitting a 2666MHz memory frequency was as easy as selecting the 2666MHz divider and rebooting. We did not change any voltage or timings settings; our memory kit operated with stability at 2666MHz without any issues. This is a very impressive quick-and-easy overclock. At 2666MHz CL 11, Maxxmem 2 shows a small performance boost in the memory copy test, although the memory read test numbers are reduced in comparison to the stock result. Latency is improved by 3.3 ns (approximately 6.5%) in comparison to the 2400MHz CL 11 test scenario. Given the relative ease at which our sample kit broke the 2600 and 2666 MHz barriers, timings were loosened to 13-14-14-35-2T to see how much extra headroom the sticks provided. The highest Super Pi 16M-stable memory overclock that we achieved with the Team Group Vulcan Gold modules was 2933MHz. This is an excellent result for a low-cost, high-frequency memory kit and did not require any effort other than a simple reduction in timings. At this point, Team Group's sub-£70 Vulcan set of memory is operating in the frequency region of kits that carry a price tag that is approximately three times greater. Increasing the memory frequency to 2933MHz, but making compromise by loosening the timings, results in an overall performance decrease in Maxxmem 2. Compared to the 2666MHz CL11 result, the memory read score at 2933MHz CL13 is higher, but all of the other three parameters show worse performance numbers. We would be cautious about calling this a 24/7 stable overclock (as we did not stress test it for an extended period of time) nor would we say that each and every Vulcan Gold memory kit will be capable of such frequencies. But we are remarkably impressed by the overclocking characteristics that our sample kit showed. We attempted a higher frequency overclock, after adjusting the BCLK to get us past the 2.933GHz memory frequency barrier. Unfortunately, 3000MHz proved a step too far on the stock voltage of 1.65V. Our validation running at a 2933MHz DRAM frequency and loosened timings can be viewed here. Team Group's Vulcan Gold 2400MHz kit is an excellent set of memory which offers strong out-of-the-box performance, impressive overclocking potential, and a highly attractive price tag. General performance for the 2400MHz 11-13-13-35-2T memory is good. Some tests will penalise the kit for slack tRCD and tRP timings. But in tests which show a preference towards frequency, the faster DRAM rate for Team Group's 2400MHz kit typically allows it to beat out a lower latency 2133MHz competitor. Overclocking performance for our Team Group Vulcan Gold memory kit was highly successful. We had no problem hitting 2666MHz - it was as simple as selecting the divider and rebooting. The maximum frequency we reached of 2933MHz was an easy target after the timings were loosened to cope with the increased frequency. If the overclocking performance of our sample is anything to go by, Team Group has once again proven that the company's value kits have the overclocking potential that makes them excellent choices to enthusiasts and gamers. Style is another positive factor for Team Group's Vulcan memory kit. As well as being available in a range of frequencies and capacities, the Vulcan modules are also available with different coloured strips, if gold is deemed unsuitable. Add that to the black PCB and Team Group's Vulcan modules form part of a good-looking set. The choice of heatspreader was an area that I liked. While I am happy to admit that I like the appearance of many memory modules with tall heatsinks, the undeniable compatibility improvement that non-intrusive heatspreaders bring about is hard to overlook. We feel that Team Group's decision to use short heatspreaders was fully justified. Priced at £65.99 from OverclockersUK, the 2400MHz Team Group Vulcan Gold 8GB memory kit represents excellent value for money. The kit is cheaper than many 2133MHz alternatives and is around £10-15 more expensive than an entry-level 1600MHz set. Taking cost, performance, and design into consideration, the 2400MHz Team Group Vulcan Gold 8GB memory kit is an excellent choice. Add in current pricing and the potential for particularly high overclocks, and the memory kit becomes a 'Must Have' product to gamers and budget-conscious enthusiasts. Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE. Pros: Competitively priced. Potential for very high overclocking headroom. Short design reduces interference issues. Available in a variety of colours. Cons: Slightly slack timings can cause dropped performance in some applications. KitGuru says: An excellent memory kit with a competitive price tag and the potential for high overclocks.

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Team Group Vulcan Gold 2400MHz 8GB Memory Kit Review

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