Intro

The Team Group Night Hawk DDR 3200 MHz 16 GB kit review

Team Group has been creating high quality memory products for two decades and their Team T-Force performance line-up is aimed at the enthusiast gamer. We received a T-Force Night Hawk RGB DDR4 3200 MHz 2×8 GB CAS16 memory kit for review (TF2D416G3200HC16CDC01) from Team Group, and we will see how it compares at stock and at overclocked speeds to the more expensive HyperX Predator DDR4 3333 MHz CAS16 memory kit.

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Team Group’s Night Hawk RGB DDR4 line-up has been updated to provide RGB LED compatibility on a white (or black) 10-layer PCB that uses stylized hawk wings in the design of its heavy aluminum heatspreaders. The overall aesthetics of the Night Hawk memory in white with a soft and ever-changing RGB glow inside of a PC are amazing. The RGB lighting is completely customizable, and Night Hawk can sync with ASUS AURA, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion and MSI Mystic Light motherboards to produce millions of combinations. BLITZ software from the Team Group website (scroll to bottom, “software download“) can be used to also customize the RGB lighting for other motherboards.

Here is a short video clip showing a small sample of the Night Hawk’s RGB lighting cycles using a Light Side Star Wars Collectors Edition of the TITAN Xp. The possibilities are endless as the light can be set to cycle through 40 shades of green to match the rebels, or switch to red – or in any color or combination with a plethora of synchronization options available.

From our testing with Ivy Bridge and Haswell platforms, using fast DDR3 over slower DDR3 only brought limited gains to a very few games. In our last 16 GB DDR4 evaluation using a Skylake Core i7-6700 at 4.4 GHz, we compared HyperX Predator DDR4 3333 MHz against G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series DDR4 3000 MHz and found that faster memory brought a little extra overall performance.

Memory pricing is still high compared with 2 years ago, but it appears to be softening. The Team Group Night Hawk 16 GB DDR4 3200 MHz kit can be purchased at Newegg for $189.99 while the HyperX Predator 16 GB DDR4 3333 MHz kit currently costs $244.40. If you prefer black, the Night Hawk 16 GB 3200 MHz kit is at time of posting on sale at Newegg for $175.99.

Here is our testbed of the two competing 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) memory kits.

Team Group Night Hawk RGB PC4 25600 2 x 8 GB DDR4 Kit (3200/3333/3400 MHz)

HyperX Predator PC 26600 DDR4 2 x 8 GB Kit (3333 MHz)

Testing Platform

Our testing platform is Windows 10 Home 64-bit, using an Intel Core i7-8700K at 4.60 GHz in an EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard, with 16 GB of Team Group Night Hawk RGB DDR4 at 3200/3333/3400 MHz or 16GB of HyperX Predator DDR4 at 3333 MHz. Both memory kits use CAS16 and the Command Rate is set at 2T by their respective default XMP 1.0 profiles in the BIOS. The default XMP Profile 1 Night Hawk timings are 16-18-18-38 while the HyperX Predator timings are at 16-18-18-36. The settings, benchmarks, testing conditions, and hardware are identical except for the two DDR4 kits being compared.

We used a GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition at stock clocks for all of our testing, but used a TITAN Xp Star Wars Collectors Edition for the RGB lighting video. We will compare the HyperX Predator DDR4 at 3333 MHz versus the Night Hawk DDR4 at 3200/3333/3400 MHz to chart the effects of memory speeds on the performance of 9 modern games at a maxed-out 1920×1080 resolution together with all of the important memory-related benchmarking tools including AIDA64, SANDRA, RealBench 243, PC Mark, 3D Mark, Cinebench, Star Swarm demo, and Wprime.

Features and Product Specifications

Here are the features and specifications of Team Group Night Hawk memory from Team Group’s website:

In addition, using the XMP 1.0 profile, the default command rate is 2T and the latency is CL16-18-18-38. Voltage may be safely adjusted from 1.2V to 1.4V. Team Group informed us that they use both Hynix and Samsung memory chips and it may change any time between them.

Features

NIGHT HAWK RGB： DDR4 RGB full-color lighting effects

Using JEDEC Association latest RC 2.0 circuit configuration

Supports T-FORCE BLITZ control

Supports ASUS Aura Sync

Exclusive hawkeyes with battle totem design

1.2~1.4V ultra low working voltage with 40% energy saving NIGHT HAWK LED： Hawk wings symmetric type heat spreader

Unique hawkeyes light guide panel design

High-efficiency aluminum heat spreader

LED breathing light

10 layers of circuit board

The specifications look good, and it is important to note that Team Group gives a limited lifetime warranty for Night Hawk memory. Let’s take a closer look by unboxing the Team Group Night Hawk RGB memory.