Available in three colourways, GeIL's Orion V RGB AMD Edition line-up of DDR5 memory comes with both AMD EXPO and Intel XMP profiles despite its name, and sport a relatively clean RGB aesthetic.

If you've been in the DIY PC scene for some time, GeIL would be a name that isn't all that unfamiliar - the brand has been around for some time and at one point in time, was really popular for its memory products that hark back to the days of DDR3 and even DDR2. While of late, the brand has not gotten as much media attention as its competitors such Corsair, G.Skill, Kingston and the like, they do actually have a pretty decent selection of modern memory products, such as the Orion V RGB AMD Edition line-up of DDR5 memory modules. Available in speeds of up to 6400MT/s and various capacities and CAS latencies, the Orion V RGB AMD Edition, despite its name, comes with both AMD EXPO and Intel XMP profiles built-in, and features integrated RGB lighting effects for a touch of bling.

For this review, we'll be taking a look at the DDR5 6000 CL38 (CL38-44-44-84 1.35V) variant of the Orion V RGB AMD Edition - read on to see how a 32GB kit of these RAMs fare in a series of productivity and gaming benchmark tests with AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D gaming processor and a RTX 4090 graphics card!

Packaging & Aesthetics

The Orion V RGB AMD Edition DDR5 6000 CL38 comes shipped in a compact rectangular box with a shimmery blue colourway. On the rear of the box, we get a cutout that allows for a glimpse of the memory module's sticker containing the RAM's specifications and serial number.

Within the box, we get two clear plastic clamshells that hold the memory modules - an indication of the RAMs' budget pedigree is the fact that we don't get any other accessories or printed materials with them.

In terms of aesthetics, the memory modules come with aluminium heat spreaders that are available in three colours, namely Titanium Grey, Racing Red and Glacier White. For the purposes of this review, I'll be taking a look at the Titanium Grey variant, where if anything, I do think that the grey comes across as more black than grey!

Racing Red sure is an interesting colour choice, given how the RAMs of late tend to be either black, grey or white in colour - while red RAMs are not really my cup of tea, they sure remind me of the DDR3 and early DDR4 days where RAMs with red coloured heat spreaders from G.Skill, Kingston and the like were somewhat common.

The heat spreaders of the RAMs aren't what one would consider hefty, and we get a RGB lighting strip on top of the said heat spreaders. As can be seen, GeIL has adorned the said strip with triangular patterns along the sides, and we get honeycomb patterns along the long edge of the RGB lighting strip for a small touch of aesthetic flair. The heat spreaders feature a smooth brushed aluminium finish with five flattened hexagonal shapes on one side, which I suppose allude to the fact that these are DDR5 memory modules, and we do also get an illuminated "G" motif that's found on both sides of the memory modules.

Specifications & Variants

The Orion V RGB AMD Edition is available in various speeds up to 6400 MT/s, and a selection of different CAS Latencies and capacities as can be seen on the screen. For this particular review, I’ll be looking at their 32GB DDR5 6000 CL38 kit that comprises two 16GB memory modules, with memory timings of CL38-44-44-84 at 1.35v.

While the RAMs are called the “AMD Edition”, they do actually come with both AMD EXPO and Intel XMP profiles, as per the BIOS snapshots above - this is further confirmed by CPU-Z’s readouts as pictured above as well. This means that the Orion V RGB AMD Edition can be used in both AMD and Intel systems with a peace of mind. It's worth noting too that GeIL also has the vanilla Orion V RGB SKU, which comes with XMP profiles only and is available in a wider range of speeds up to 8400 MT/s.

In terms of customising the RAM's RGB lighting effects, GeIL doesn’t have a dedicated Windows-based app for this, so you’ll have to use your motherboard’s RGB app to customise the lighting effects accordingly.

For this review, I tested the GeIL RAMs with a Gigabyte motherboard, and as can be seen in the screenshots above, you can use the Gigabyte Control Center app to tweak the RGB lighting effects of the GeIL RAMs.

Test Bench Specifications

To put the GeIL RAMs through their paces, I’ve setup a test bench that is powered by AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D with the following specs, where I’ll also be pitting a set of KingBank DDR5 6000 CL28 non-RGB memory modules against the GeILs just to see how higher latency DDR5 6000 will perform against low latency DDR5 6000 memory:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (stock settings, PBO & Curve Optimiser disabled)
• CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE ARGB
• CPU Thermal Paste: Thermalright TF7
• Motherboard: Gigabyte X670E AORUS MASTER (F35 BIOS)
• Memory: 32GB (2x16GB) GeIL Orion V RGB AMD Edition DDR5 6000 CL38 (DDR5 6000 CL38-44-44-84 1.35V) / 32GB (2x16GB) KingBank DDR5 Dark Heatsink UDIMM 6000MHz (DDR5 6000 CL28-35-35-76 1.45V)
• Storage: Lexar NM790 1TB NVMe SSD
• Graphics Card: Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 4090 MASTER 24G
• PSU: Cooler Master MWE Gold 1050 V2 ATX 3.0
• Case: Open-air test bench
• Monitor: Gigabyte M27U 27" LCD monitor (4K, 160Hz)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro (24H2 with all latest drivers and updates installed, "Balanced" power profile)
• Graphics Driver: GeForce Game Ready Driver 576.88
• Resizable BAR: Enabled

The default EXPO profiles for both the GeIL and KingBank modules were enabled for the entirety of testing, with no further tweaks to memory settings and timings.

Benchmark Tests

The following benchmark tests were used to measure the performance of the GeIL and KingBank RAMs:

Productivity Benchmarks

• 7-Zip Compression & Decompression
• AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark
• Cinebench 2024

Gaming Benchmarks

• Black Myth Wukong Benchmark Tool
• Cyberpunk 2077 v2.21 In-game Benchmark
• F1 23 In-game Benchmark

For gaming benchmarks, all tests were run on the 1080p resolution.

Productivity Benchmark - 7-Zip Compression & Decompression

First up, we’ve got 7-Zip's compression and decompression test; with the KingBank RAMs, the test bench was 2.7% faster than with the GeIL RAMs, and for the decompression test, the GeIL yielded 0.6% faster results than with the KingBank RAMs.

Productivity Benchmark - AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark

With AIDA64’s cache and memory benchmark, as expected, the KingBank RAMs were faster than the GeILs but not by that large a margin; the KingBanks are about 0.8% faster for read speeds, 1.4% faster in terms of write speeds and 1.1% faster in terms of copy speeds. As a lower-latency part, the Kingbank RAMs naturally have better latency performance than the GeIL RAMs.

Productivity Benchmark - Cinebench 2024

Rounding off the productivity benchmarks section is Cinebench 2024, where with the GeIL RAMs, we see that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D attains a multi core score of 1018, versus 1023 points when we’ve got the KingBank RAMs installed. For single core scores, the 7800X3D gets a score of 107 with the GeIL RAMs, and a score of 108 with the KingBank RAMs.

Gaming Benchmark - Black Myth Wukong Benchmark Tool

Moving on to gaming benchmarks, we’ve got Black Myth Wukong’s standalone benchmark tool up first, where the performance of the test system is pretty much identical with the GeIL and KingBank RAMs installed - in both instances, the test bench achieves an average FPS of 133.

Gaming Benchmark - Cyberpunk 2077 v2.21 In-game Benchmark

Things are pretty much the same too for Cyberpunk 2077’s in-game benchmark, where the test system achieves very similar FPS figures that fall within margin of error with both the GeIL and KingBank RAMs.

Gaming Benchmark - F1 23 Benchmark Tool

Closing out this section on gaming benchmarks is F1 23’s in-game benchmark test. Once again, we see that the test system puts out the exact same average FPS figure when comparing the results obtained with the GeIL RAMs versus the KingBank RAMs. We do however, get better minimum and maximum FPS figures with the KingBank RAMs.

Thermal Performance

Let’s have a quick look at thermals. With F1 23’s in-game benchmark, where I ran a five-lap test for around 9 minutes in total, the GeIL RAMs achieved an average temperature of 51.8°C. For the sake of having a comparison although it wouldn't be a true apples-to-apples comparison, the KingBank RAMs achieved an average temperature of 44.7°C under the same test conditions, which is unsurprising seeing as it does have a heftier heatsink than the GeIL RAMs, and doesn’t come with RGB lighting effects to boot.

Pricing & Conclusion

It can be seen that with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, CAS latency has a bigger impact on performance when it comes to productivity applications, at least with the small sample of three productivity benchmarks that I did. Gaming performance on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be too far off when comparing the CL38 GeIL RAMs to the CL28 KingBank RAMs, though I must caveat that this is again, from a relatively small selection of gaming benchmark tests, so your mileage may vary. This is especially if you’re intending to use say, different processors such as a non-X3D offering from the Ryzen 9000 series instead, where you might get more pronounced performance differences with lower CAS latencies.

From a product perspective, I think that the GeIL RAMs look pretty good in terms of their aesthetics, and it’s great to see that you’ve got three colours to choose from. Whether or not these RAMs represent good value will really boil down to their pricing where you’re from – I’d say that the GeIL Orion V RGB AMD Edition can probably shine if they’re priced well and positioned as wallet-friendly RGB DDR5 RAMs for folks looking to build a budget gaming PC, at least for the CL38 variant that I’ve tested in this review.

As of the time of writing this article, the GeIL Orion V RGB AMD Edition DDR5 6000 CL38 can be purchased from Amazon for around $100 US dollars, or around $149 Singapore dollars from PC hardware retailers in Singapore.

Get these RAMs from Amazon: https://amzn.to/4fbj8GA (affiliate link)

Get these RAMs from Lazada Singapore: https://s.lazada.sg/s.X7Odn (affiliate link)

Get these RAMs from Shopee Singapore: https://s.shopee.sg/8KesuevLAK (affiliate link)

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The RAMs featured in this video were review units provided on loan by CDL Trading Pte Ltd, the authorised distributor for GeIL memory products in Singapore.