While you can’t buy graphics cards for reasonable money at the moment, memory upgrades are thankfully a little more affordable. However, if you want a cutting-edge kit using the latest features such as RGB lighting, you’ll still pay a small premium, as is the case with Thermaltake ToughRAM.
TOUGHRAM XG RGB RAM Review
With a price of $132 for a dual-channel 16GB kit of 3600MHz RAM,The ToughRAM costs a tad more than the Gigabyte Aorus RGB memory kit we also looked, and a good chunk more than Corsair’s 3600MHz Vengeance RGB Pro kits. The Thermaltake modules are quite tall too, measuring 48mm high compared to the super-low profile 41mm height of the Aorus modules.
On the plus side, this extra money does at least buy you another couple of hundred megahertz of rated effective frequency at 3600MHz compared to the Thermaltake’s 3333MHz. These Thermaltake modules also offer quite a lot more in the way of light customization than the Aorus sticks, which we’ll get to in a minute.
The memory chips use Hynix C dies and have timings of 18-19-19-39 at this speed, while dual-channel 4000MHz, 4400MHz and 4600MHz kits are also available. Sadly, in our AMD X570 system, we couldn’t push the frequency any higher than the default 3600MHz, even if we bumped up the DDR voltage to 1.4V, but this frequency is still fast enough to make the most of synchronizing with Infinity Fabric on Zen 2 and Zen 3 gaming CPUs anyway.
The modules themselves are beautiful and have three diffusing RGB LED covers each. The top strip comprises two arrow shapes, with the points meeting in the middle, and a third triangular section sits underneath the meeting point. The diffusing covers all sit on top of a glossy grey metal midsection. Eight RGB LEDs sit underneath them, and although you can control the color of each of them, you can’t adjust the color of each of the three sections independently, as there’s some shared lighting that spills over from the center section into the top strips.
Meanwhile, the heatsinks are black with a crosshatch design on one side. The most impressive part of these modules’ attire, though, is of course the RGB lighting. It’s punchy, vivid and all but the white color setting is accurate – the latter lacks the vibrant pure white we’ve seen from other modules, with Corsair’s latest sticks offering slightly more vibrant lighting too. However, the greens and yellows here were more convincing than they were on the Aorus RGB memory.
Thermaltake’s software also allows you to choose from numerous lighting effects, including a static mode. You can set most of the effects to make use of the full RGB spectrum, dishing out fancy rainbow lights or applying effects to single or customized colors, so it’s fairly flexible.
Conclusion
Thermaltake’s ToughRAM XG RGB modules look unique, and offer vivid and highly customizable RGB lighting. The only color that wasn’t as accurate as the competition was white. However, the ToughRAM XG RGB modules are much shorter than Corsair’s standard Vengeance modules and have an interesting trio of illuminated areas, which makes them stand out in terms of looks.
The only issue is price, as Corsair’s Vengeance Pro RGB kits currently cost under $110 for the same 3600MHz speed. As such, unless you’re sold on the ToughRAM XG RGB unique exterior and multiple lighting zones, Corsair’s Vengeance Pro RGB memory remains a slightly better buy.
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