Review: KingBank DDR5-4800 32GB Kit (MSI Overclocking)

Building your own PC is a never-ending trend. With graphics card now seeing a lowered price, gamers will be expecting their own builds. As the trend goes, DDR5 RAM is slowly but surely to replace DDR4, and although the prices for a single DDR5 module can go quite high, it is set to go down with the ever-evolving AMD Zen4 structured CPU. Today, let’s check out the KingBank DDR5-4800 16GB with Samsung dies, which costs only 600 yuan or so per stick.

Speaking of Samsung dies, during when DDR3 RAMs took the vogue, most PC builders preferred Samsung for their XMP availability with cost-effectiveness. So what about DDR5 RAM sticks?

Unboxing

The KingBank DDR5-4800 16GB RAM is packed in a rather simple box, white with its logo colorfully shaping along the right part. But to check it at some angle and the hidden laser pattern can be spotted. On the upper right corner lays the “Nationwide Lifetime Warranty” icons.

Unbox it and we can see that the RAM stick is held within a clear plastic frame.

Unlike types of dazzlingly lit memory kits, KingBank DDR5-4800 RAM goes with its originality of plain green PCB. Bearing a 16GB capacity in a single stick, it still holds chips on one side, and the other side has its info label, stating a working voltage of 1.1V.

DDR4 and DDR5 RAMs are a bit different in looking, so what are those little black squares in the middle?

That is PMIC, short for power management integrated circuit, specific to DDR5 RAMs. For faster running, these little chips are moved from the motherboard to the RAM stick to guarantee a better power management and more accurate voltage control. Besides that, on-die ECC program is added to the memory kits to keep them performing with higher stability. These features, previously seen in servers, are now available in desktop memory sticks with the advent of DDR5 era.

Zooming in the sticker, we can see the Samsung icon and the die code which is certified to be Samsung B-die code after checking online. Then on the chips we can find the “6VB” on them. These are the chips for computer overclocking enthusiasts.

So much for the unboxing part, and let’s install them and begin the tests!

Testing

So we have a motherboard configuration of i5 12600KF+B660+RTX3060. Right, Z690 may be better to test these RAMs, but let’s stick to the B660 and try its overclocking. First we check the specifications of the memory modules from CPU-Z. Click SPD and we can see that the KingBank DDR5-4800 16GB RAM takes Samsung dies of JEDEC standard which limits the maximum default frequency to 4800MHz, with the CAS latency of 42-39-39-77.

Overclocking

From BIOS we see the XMP setup, so we are now enabling the XMP profile. You can follow the steps as show in the pictures above. Since they uses 6VB B-die, we can set the voltage to 1.4V and overclock the DDR5 RAM modules to 6000MHz.

Back to CPU-Z, now we have the KingBank DDR5-4800 16GB*2 RAM modules overclocked to 6000MHz with timings as 40-39-39-70.

Benchmarking

So we have the DDR5-4800 modules overclocked to DDR5-6000MHz, easy job done.

Then we check its read-write performance in AID64. Its overall reading speed got 24% faster and writing speed 18% faster after overclocking.

And we check out how they perform in CrystalDiskMark. After overclocking to 6000MHz, the sequence read and write speeds measured 14% and 13% faster respectively.

And in 7ZIP, the overclocked DDR5-6000 modules measured an 2% overall performance uptick.

Game Testing

For RAM-demanding games, the overclocked DDR5-6000 got a 7Hz higher frame rate in 1080P gaming scenarios, which accounts for a 9% improvement.

By the way, we checked the working temperature of these heatsink-less memory modules. And they were running at 41℃, as shown in the infrared thermometer, on the chip-less side even after overclocked.

Conclusion

Truth be told, the overclocked DDR5-6000 memory modules empowered by Samsung B-die chips can really take the vogue again. KingBank Technology is picking them as cost-effective high-efficiency DDR5 memory RAMs, and how can anyone resist these powerful gadgets? Lifetime warranty and later versions armored with heatsink (spoiler alert), the KingBank DDR5-4800 32GB Kit 16GB*2, overclocked to 6000MHz!) is a sure thing to possess.

[The article was originally posted in Chinese on Aug. 22nd 2022]