Today, G.Skill has announced a new high-capacity addition to its Trident Z5 Neo RGB family, specifically designed for AMD's AM5 platform. G.Skill flaunts this offering as the world's first 256GB (64GBx4) UDIMM-based kit, achieving DDR5-6000 speeds at CL32 latency with AMD's EXPO technology. There's no word on pricing or availability, but we can expect to hear more from the manufacturer soon.
DDR5 setups are commonly equipped with two RAM sticks (DIMMs), and adding more, such as four DIMMs, increases the load on the memory controller and increases trace length, often leading to a significant reduction in the frequency while driving up latency. JEDEC standards (for the 9800X3D) suggest that using four DIMMs reduces DDR5 speeds to 3600 MT/s, compared to 5600 MT/s with two DIMMs.
Up until this point, nearly all 256GB kits (64GBx4) required RDIMMs (Registered DIMMs) to achieve high frequencies; RDIMMs are targeted at enterprise/workstation platforms and are not supported on most mainstream motherboards. This new kit by G.Skill changes that, pairing high capacity with AM5-optimized speeds, all while using standard consumer UDIMMs. These kits employ SK hynix ICs under the hood, but the exact dies have not been specified.
Across two test setups featuring the Ryzen 7 9800X3D (Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero) and the Ryzen 9 9900X (MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi), the team managed DDR5-6000 CL32 speeds with the included EXPO profile. If your motherboard and memory controller are not the limiting factor, these are the values you should expect out of the box.
A pinch of overclocking with the MSI MEG X870E Godlike pushed this kit past DDR5-7000 CL38. Alternatively, for Ryzen 9000 optimized speeds, the team also managed a DDR5-6400 CL32 configuration with some fine-tuning, but your mileage will vary. If you want the absolute snappiest timings on your AM5 system, consider G.Skill's recently announced DDR5-6000 CL26 kit.
It should be possible to achieve DDR5-6000 CL30 speeds, but that will require exhaustive tweaking and testing. On that note, G.Skill's DDR5-6400 CL30 48GB modules are worth looking into, if you're not after capacities like 256GB. All said and done, this kit should be a game-changer for developers and content creators aiming to equip their setup with high-speed, high-capacity memory without needing to step up to platforms like Threadripper.
