V-Color recently sent us their new Prism Pro RGB memory kit for review. Ah V-Color… there’s only a few companies I’ve seen in COMPUTEX for the longest time that I wanted to work with but due to regional availability, getting their products was relatively challenging. Regardless, its more of getting to know the company and understand how they work, how they communicate products that sometimes help me get to know what goes into creating their products. V-Color is one of them
This company has one of the most flashiest booths in the show floor during the annual COMPUTEX expo in Taipei and they’ve always caught my eye but its definitely their products that’s most representative of the company’s personality. In the day and age of #RGBeverything in consumer PCs, V-Color definitely would a nice spot with their company name alone but of course that’s shaped by the company’s product themselves. What’s usually dismissed as an unknown in the memory space by the western world, V-Color has been a long-standing part of the competitive memory market and with the current shifts in the computing market, they are now available in the Philippines.
In this review we’ll take a look at our first V-Color product: the Prism Pro RGB memory kit. Available in single, dual-channel as well as non-DRAM RGB light kits, V-Color is offering a full RGB experience for a fraction of the price of a full quad-DIMM set.
Let’s take a look at how these DDR4-3200 memory kit performs in this review. Read on!
Features & Specifications – V-Color Prism Pro RGB
- Immersive RGB memory lighting experience fortified with 16 ultra Broadbeam LEDs for vibrant and seamless synchronized PC lighting. Compared to traditional LEDs, V-color Prism Pro RGB LED is 60% more vibrant giving your custom PC build a spectacular lighting.
- 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 uniquely hand-crafted prism RGB infused design, fortified by curated heat-dissipating copper alloy heatsink with mirror reflection design.
- Capable of fully overclocking with wider range to overclock.
- Fully Overclocking capable, high tolerance with wider range to Overclocking
- Synchronized across M/B of GIGABYTE, MSI, ASROCK
Available in 16GB kits of 2x 8GB modules with speeds of DDR4-3200, DDR4-3600, and DDR4-4000:
- DDR4-3200 16-18-18-38, CL16, 1.35V
- DDR4-3600 (also comes in white heatspreader) 18-22-22-42, CL18, 1.35V
- DDR4-4133 19-24-24-44, CL19, 1.35V
Also comes in Non-DRAM dummy sticks.
Closer Look – Packaging
V-Color Prism Pro RGB DDR4 Memory Kit Review V-Color Prism Pro RGB DDR4 Memory Kit Review
Recently, V-Color sent us their Prism Pro SCC memory kit including both the 16GB memory pair and also the non-DRAM demo kit. Combined, these two are called the V-Color Prism Pro RGB SCC kit and is also available for retail as an entire set. That said, PCHUB is selling these memory and the non-DRAM demo kit separately.
The packaging itself is similar for both kits with a glamour shot of the product at the front with a badge of the capacity as well. Over at the back we have some marketing narrative and bullets.
The dummy kit box will have Dummy Kit labelled on the front as well, please take note of this. I’ve seen a lot of Lazada buyers complained they were misled despite the product labels in online listing specifically saying its the right item, for example.
Closer Look – V-Color Prism Pro RGB Memory
The V-Color Prism Pro RGB modules feature an aluminum heatspreader with pretty much bare tooling. There is a slight V-shape in the middle but other than that the modules are quite simple.
The dummy sticks are exactly identical except for the gold connectors or fingers. These lack the complete connection row because these are the only pins the dummy V-Color memory module need to light up and sync.
Of course the main discussion here will be how the RGB looks like and the picture above shows us the lightbar design for the V-Color Prism Pro RGB memory. Featuring a diamond cut pattern, its definitely nothing spectacular but this is besides the fact that this is one of the fattest light bars around. Check it compared to other sticks:
Compared to the recent ones we’ve reviewed, the V-Color Prism Pro RGB has a very large surface area on the light bar which would look really good when made to fill all of the memory slots on a PC. This could be the reason for the dummy memory kit.
Here’s the V-Color SCC kit alongside the dummy non-DRAM sticks in the SCC kit. The sticks are 100% identical and impeccably well-made for a uniform look on the slots.
Depending on your build, the light bar can be a stand-out array or just a subtle addition to your case. The lights aren’t that intense but just enough to have their own presence. Just 2 of them will not be anything that would steal attention but 4 or more will definitely be an eye-catcher,
Performance Testing
Test Setup
Intel Setup
Processor: Intel Core i7 10700K
Motherboard: ASUS ProArt Z490 Creator 10G
Memory: V-Color Prism Pro DDR4-3200 Memory Kit
Storage: Patriot Viper VPN4100 1TB M.2
PSU: Seasonic Platinum 1050w
Overclocking
Recent DDR4-3200 sticks have been very kind to us, giving overclocks of up to DDR4-4000. We try these on the V-Color Prism Pro RGB, bumping up the clocks to DDR4-4000 and toggling timings to 18-22-22-42 at the same 1.35v XMP setting. DDR4-4000 on these timings hold but clocking them down to lower timings is proving to be unstable. Trying the DDR4-4133 timings of the higher-clocked SKU also didn’t yield us good results as the sticks we’re unstable already even with 1.4v.
AIDA64 Memory Test
Cinebench R20
Conclusion
Memory modules right now are quite at peak already and performance out of the box will be mostly similar across the board for any brand. That said, these modules of course will be offered as performance products if and when the opportunity presents itself, either with lower latencies larger capacities. The V-Color Prism Pro RGB serves as a mainstream solution for the RGB builder who doesn’t really need large capacity nor high-speed but wants to fill those memory slots with decent memory modules that provide good performance and aesthetics.
Performance is as expected and there’s significantly decent headroom to play around with if you want or need the memory boost thru overclocking. The main drew here is the RGB and the ability to fill in those unused memory slots with dummy kits. The dummy kits themselves are excellently made and they pair up nicely with the actual memories. I’m saying this because there are solution out there for these kinds of situation. You can buy cheap, strap-on lights to your memory or find cheap light up modules but they just don’t do the same justice as actual paired kits like the V-Color Prism Pro.
The Prism Pro doesn’t require any software. V-Color partners up with many of the popular RGB solutions from motherboard companies including ASUS Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion and MSI Mystic Light to name a few that these memory modules are compatible with. They’re also platform agnostic. That means it can work fine on both AMD or Intel systems so no worrying about compatibility.
Provided your cooler or motherboard doesn’t have or makes compatibility issues on your cooler (I’m looking at you Maximus XII Formula), fitting issues would most likely arise from how tall the memories are. These sticks are around 2″ in height and most modern tower coolers usually provide enough clearance to not bump up against these sticks although the fans on the Noctua NH-D15 will probably sit high on the first stick especially if the board positions them closer to the socket like the Maximus XII Formula.
PCHUB lists the V-Color Prism Pro RGB 16GB kit at Php4200 and Php5650 for the DDR4-3200 and DDR4-3600 respectively. The dummy kit is sold as an add-on for Php800. The main contender for V-Color is the AORUS RGB DDR4 memory These start-out at Php6190 but goes all the way up to DDR4-4400 for Php9999. Provided you don’t need the dummy kits, V-Color still outright outprices the Aorus in most respects, even the add-on kit when summing up the value makes this a better deal.
That said, if you’re a happy 16GB gamer and just want to build a fully RGB setup then the V-Color Prism Pro RGB memory kit is a great option for your setup with their SCC kit.
V-Color backs the Prism Pro RGB kit with a limited lifetime warranty. We give it our B2G Value Award!
Available from PCHUB.
