Mushkin Redline DDR4-2666 Memory Review

Mushkin has become one of the better known brands in desktop memory by bringing their customers top quality, performance and low prices. Sure, if you’ve never built your own computer, you’ve probably never heard of them, but the same could be said about any number of component manufacturers. That being said, if you have heard of them, odds are it has been good things.

That is why we’re excited to bring you a review of the latest in their lineup of consumer memory, the Mushkin Redline DDR4-2666 quad-channel memory kit.

PACKAGING, PRICING & SPECIFICATIONS

The packing of this memory kit is different from most memory kits we receive, rather than a single plastic shell, which can easily be hug on a display rack, Mushkin has elected to go with an almost full-cover box, which features a small cutout, revealing a single-stick of the set of four. We’ll also get a nice large Mushkin logo, as well as a tagline with their trademark slogan, “Get more of your computer.”

There aren’t any detailed specifications on the packaging itself, but there is a small sticker in the right-hand corner which reveals that our kit is 16GB (4×4) PC4-21300, that means, we’re dealing with a quad-channel DDR4-2666 kit. It also has a CAS Latency of the usual 15-15-15-35.

For pricing, a quick search on Amazon will bring us a price of $273.96, which makes it a bit pricier than some similar kits we’ve seen, but generally inline with the current prices of DDR4. You can also find it under the model number 994192F.

DESIGN OVERVIEW

The Redline series features Mushkin’s Frostbyte heatsink design, which is really catchy way of saying it will keep the modules memory cool. The design is a mostly solid-color (red), with a smooth metallic finish, and a small strip of mirror-like silver accenting at the bottom edge of the heatsink.

Mushkin is quite literal with their Redline branding, as this kit is not available in any other colors. Fortunately, if red isn’t your color, you can get their Blackline RAM in pretty much identical configurations.

WHAT IS DDR4?

If you’ve read along this far, you might be wondering what is DDR4 and how is it different from what was available before? – Well, to put it simply DDR4 is the next-generation in DDR (double data rate) SDRAM (synchronous dynamic random-access memory). It is as the name states, the fourth-generation and successor to DDR3.

Its advancements over previous generations include higher module density, lower voltage requirements and higher data rate transfer speeds. This means that you can not only theoretically have more RAM in your system than ever before, but that it will use less power and perform faster as well. Of course, how much these improvements effect actual usage depends the application. Server and Enterprise users will see the most benefit from adopting DDR4 than pretty much any other market.

As it stands, the only consumer platform that currently supports DDR4 memory is Intel’s X99, which you can find out more about in our reviews for both the Intel Core i7 5960x CPU, as well as the ASRock X99 OC Formula motherboard.