3600CL14 vs 4000CL17

[Jarmel]

I've been looking at two memory kits for my PC, which is a 10900k on Z490 motherboard. I've been wondering which is the overall the best among these two. I've asked in multiple places on the internet and got different answers. Both memory kits are on the QVL list for my motherboard, which is the Maximus XII Hero.

https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820232895?Item=N82E16820232895

https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820232675?Item=N82E16820232675

The 3600CL14 has lower first word latency (7.78 compared to 8.5) than the 4000CL17, but it's running at a higher voltage (1.45 compared to 1.35). The 4000CL17 has better bandwidth, but I'm not sure if that's more important than the latency difference in this case. I plan on using these at XMP settings although might do some very light overclocking. Both are Samsung B-Die.

I understand first word latency is more important on AMD than Intel but recent benchmarks seem to show that the Z490 chipset responds well to fast memory.

 

[Johan45]

In all honesty it's not going to make that much difference which set you pick. It mostly depends on your usage and the software you run. If it's gaming then it doesn't matter.

 

[JLK03F150]

Personally I would go for a 3600 2x16GB kit Cas16 instead of the 4x8GB kits. Much more cost efficient.

 

[Jarmel]

Personally I would go for a 3600 2x16GB kit Cas16 instead of the 4x8GB kits. Much more cost efficient.

Those were the ones I was initially considering but after seeing the benchmarking results from Gamers Nexus with the 10600k paired with high frequency/low latency, I decided to just get faster ram.

 

[Woomack]

You can grab cheap memory and get similar results as on these top kits. The difference in timings is barely visible (unless you compare something like CL14 to CL22). In most cases the difference between DDR4-3600 and anything higher is also barely visible. The difference is mostly at 720p and lower details at 1080p. Then you can see up to 5% performance gain. Once you move to 1440p+ and higher display details then you see like 0-1% improvement.
Most memory reviews in the web are a total joke, and I don't even want to start with pure marketing written by clueless people. I'm not saying right now about gamers nexus but in general. People for some reason trust some popular websites which are often posting garbage tests in a nice frame and later all try to make a rule out of that.

 

[Jarmel]

You can grab cheap memory and get similar results as on these top kits. The difference in timings is barely visible (unless you compare something like CL14 to CL22). In most cases the difference between DDR4-3600 and anything higher is also barely visible. The difference is mostly at 720p and lower details at 1080p. Then you can see up to 5% performance gain. Once you move to 1440p+ and higher display details then you see like 0-1% improvement.
Most memory reviews in the web are a total joke, and I don't even want to start with pure marketing written by clueless people. I'm not saying right now about gamers nexus but in general. People for some reason trust some popular websites which are often posting garbage tests in a nice frame and later all try to make a rule out of that.

I guess my concern was that with lower kits I could end up with a kit that isn't able to get identical performance as these. These are binned and take out the question mark in the equation. I was also not really planning on doing much memory overclocking so doing something simple like using a XMP profile was alluring. I understand the difference between the two is pretty minimal but they're identical in price.

 

[memphist0]

If I understand it right. High clock speed for Intel systems and lower latency for Ryzen. Each architecture is a little different.