Any tech geek who’s been in a coma for the past decade would be excused for thinking of PNY as primarily a memory company, but its recent marketing efforts have focused primarily for storage and graphics cards. It’s not that the firm dropped out of PC memory, but that it appeared to be resting on its reputation as new kits were released. That’s about to change with its latest XLR8 modules.
The snazzy new kit comes in plain packaging at a surprisingly low price: Available from several sellers for around $155, the firm’s online store recently dropped its price from $145 to $140. That makes it $10 cheaper than the least-expensive previous 32GB kit we’ve tested.
Like every other DDR4-3200 kit we’ve tested, XLR8 part number MD32GK2D4320016XR uses Intel XMP overclocking technology to push mainstream DRAM ICs (memory chips) to its rated settings at 1.35V. Buyers who find that their board isn’t capable of XMP will find a highest non-XMP configuration of DDR4-2400, which is still a bit faster than the DDR4-2133 of most competitors.
We’re fortunate enough to have a full range of 2x 16GB DDR4-3200 kits with 16-18-18-36 timings to compare, and have included the cheapest of those for this battle of value supremacy. Readers who’d like to understand a bit more about that data rate and timings should check out our PC Memory 101 feature. The test system uses AMD’s fast Ryzen 7 3700X to feed data through MSI’s memory-mastering MEG X570 Ace from Toshiba’s OCZ RD400 SSD, while Gigabyte’s GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming OC 8G pushes the pixels.
PNY XLR8 ties HyperX Predator RGB for the worst overclocking headroom on our platform, though getting anywhere beyond rated settings is somewhat of a gift.
We didn’t find much flexibility in this XLR8 kit’s timings either, as dropping the speed from DDR4-3200 to DDR4-2933 allowed only one cycle of latency to be shaved off. But PNY could have other tricks up its sleeve.
Not only did XLR8 have the worst overclocked performance results in Sandra, but even its XMP bandwidth came out slightly behind competitors. It did score the lowest XMP latency though, which could point to better-optimized advanced timings.
The XLR8 also fell slightly behind in gaming performance, though by a far lesser amount than its price difference. Could this be a best value?
XLR8 DDR4-3200 makes up for some of its earlier losses in our performance average by getting the best XMP-based 7-Zip encode time.
Final Thoughts
Two of the kits in today’s comparison have RGB, which some users don’t want, and others are willing to pay a little for. None of that is considered in a basic performance-per-dollar chart.
Those who only want the best performance per dollar will find that the XLR8 delivers, providing the same overall performance as the second-cheapest kit while being priced up to $15 less. Given that big value surprise, we’re looking toward more offerings from PNY.