XPG Lancer RGB MERA Edition DDR5-7200 32GB Dual-Channel Memory Kit Review

TweakTown's Rating: 98%

The Bottom Line

The XPG Lancer RGB MERA Edition is exclusive and attractive. At 7200 MHz, it mixes it up with its direct competition. However, with the limited availability, and no hard pricing to go from, this may not be the perfect time to buy.

Pros

• + Limited edition
• + ARGB lighting
• + Works with AMD
• + Flexibility for overclocking
• + Performance

Cons

• - Limited audience
• - Limited availability
• - Current pricing

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

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XPG has kept us busy over the years, and as DDR5 hit the market, they were the first to send us anything to test. While speeds started much slower than we would have liked, we knew as time went by, things would pick up, and we would soon see some very cool kits come through our door. While still part of the Lancer family of DDR5, XPG has a couple of new designs to show off, along with much more speed than we saw in those initial samples.

Of course, you can buy what we are about to show in all respects except for the visual appeal in their vanilla form, but we feel many would gravitate towards the other pair of options. The one we do not have at this time is XPG Lancer RGB, which is ROG Certified and comes with a black mirror exterior with the certification painted onto the spreader. Although, with the ROG kits, speed is limited to 6600 MHz. The other is the one we have, which takes us back a few years to the creation of MERA, XPGs digital spokesperson.

In the most basic sense, these are a kit of Lancer RGB, with the black brushed heat spreaders we are used to, but they sport a much cuter visual appeal this time with the bust of MERA presented on both sides of each stick. Along with the new visual appeal, we are also into the higher range of speeds, and it is currently the fastest set of DDR5 that XPG has to offer. How about we dive right in, see the latest and greatest from XPG, and see if they fit your next build?

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The part number of the Lancer RGB MERA Edition is quite long, and all of the XPG 7200 MHz kits use the same initial portion of that part number. The AX5U7200C3416G covers the vanilla Lancer RGB, the MERA Edition, as well as the ASUS ROG Certified kit. It is the ending you need to pay close attention to when shopping. In this instance, the end is DCLARMLBK. In that, you get a set of DDR5 with black heat spreaders, but being the MERA Edition, you also get a pretty face to see. As the part number alludes to, this is a 32GB kit of 7200 MHz RAM.

Timings are kept on the lower side, with CAS 34 set as the primary timing, and the secondaries are set to 46-46-116 with a 2T command rate. To run the provided XMP profile, you will need 1.40 VDIMM to accomplish it. Each stick is 133.35mm long, 43.6mm tall, 8.5mm wide, and weighs 70.7 grams, although the specifications say it should be 72-ish grams. Lastly, the XPG Lancer RGB MERA Edition DDR5 has a limited lifetime warranty.

Considering news broke of these sticks in November last year, we assumed they would have plenty of time to get these kits to the market. However, on this side of the pond, they are extremely hard to find, and they come with a severe price premium due to that fact. We were able to locate them in the US at ooddss.com, and while we would not pay the price, they are listed at $374.72, which is astronomical for such a set of DDR5.

We also saw a couple of listings overseas for Rs 78,000, which translates to roughly $950. As much as we love what we have in hand, what we see online will certainly sway potential customers away right now, but we do hope to see some kits on this side of the pond in their Amazon store soon, and with a price that is much more down to earth.

XPG Lancer RGB Mera Edition DDR5 RGB 7200MHz 32GB (2x16GB)

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$178.99	$178.99	$177.78	$174.83	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 4/23/2024 at 10:47 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Packaging and XPG Lancer RGB MERA Edition

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The packaging is eye-popping and will undoubtedly grab your attention with the bright pink and orange used as the backdrop. On the left is MERA, at least most of her, while to the right, we see more information. There are notifications for the XMP profile and the compatible sync methods, with a much smaller image of the RAM than we typically see on packaging. Along with its limited status, we also see the XPG Lancer RGB MERA Edition title, the 32GB of density, and the impressive 7200 MHz speed.

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Around the back, we see that this is desktop U-DIMM on the left, while to the right is a view of the product stickers, but not much more. There is a code to take you to the product page should the sticker not offer all the required information.

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Inside the box, you will find your kit packed snugly inside a plastic clamshell. In this instance, you can see some abrasion on the plastic, but the sticks inside are in perfect condition and ready for what we are about to throw at it.

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The front of this kit keeps to the Lancer RGB overall design, but this time there has been paintwork added to the left for added style, but the face on the right is MERA and is a cute addition to an otherwise plainer-looking set of Lancer RGB sticks.

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You will find the same on the back, but everything has been reversed, with MERA now on the left. To the right is the product sticker with the product number, type of RAM, speed, density, timings, voltage, and serial number.

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From this angle, we cannot complain about the view of what the kit would look like when installed into your system. All of that brushed aluminum in black, the design work at the left, and that set of oversized eyes of MERA staring back at you.

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At the top of the sticks, we see that the heat spreaders wrap around the edges of the diffuser at both ends, but the center is left wide open, with the angled chunk showing on both sides. XPG also places its name in the center of the diffuser, so there is no guesswork needed as to who made your kit.

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Lifting the hood, we can see thermal tape used to cover the ICs, but no pad is provided for the PMIC. As to those ICs, they are SK Hynix H5CG48AGB0 or A-die chips.

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Controlling the power through the Lancer RGB MERA Edition kits in an unlocked PMIC. Richtek manufactures it, and it is a 0D=9C model we have seen in many kits previously.

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As they sit currently, without any power or life, we still like what we have. The black and white is a perfect mix to our overall theme, and the blue, pink, and orange of MERA at the top stands out as she should.

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Even with the brilliance of the ARGB illumination of the diffuser, it takes nothing away from the bust of MERA. The color blends are smooth, and we cannot see hotspots in the LEDs. While they tend to go out of sync quickly when used, we still appreciate the kit XPG has put together here, and we hope it performs as well as it looks.

Test System Details

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To obtain the Intel CPU-Z screenshots, you will see directly following this image, and this is the system we used to do it, as well as in attaining the results seen in the following pages. Thanks go out to be quiet!, ASUS, and NVIDIA, for supporting this venture. Detailed specifications of the system can be found below.

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As always, we clear CMOS, power things up, get into the BIOS, and enable the XMP profile. In doing so, the XPG Lancer RGB MERA Edition sticks post and get into the OS at 7200 MHz with the advertised 34-46-46-116 2T timings. Another trip back into the BIOS told us that the VDIMM was set to 1.40V, but the system agent was at 1.281V while the memory controller used 1.296V.

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In an attempt to reduce the timings, we found that anything lower than CAS 34 caused no post and BSOD issues for us. However, we did find movement in the secondaries, where we are now running the MERA Edition sticks at 34-42-42-116 2T, rivaling the TEAM Delta RGB kit we tested previously.

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We also looked for more speed from these Lancer RGB modules and found some. As we did for the other overclocking attempt, we raised the voltages to 1.50 VDIMM, VDDq, and Tx while increasing the system agent to 1.38V and the memory controller to 1.39375V. Doing so allows us to push the HERA Edition kit to 7600 MHz with the 34-46-46-116 2T XMP profile timings.

Chad's Intel DDR5 Dual-Channel Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus Z690 APEX - Buy from Amazon
• CPU: Intel Core i9 12900K - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: be quiet! PURE LOOP 360mm - Buy from Amazon
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition - Buy from Amazon
• Storage: Phison B47R Fortis 1600 2TB M.2
• Case: Thermaltake Core P3 TG - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: be quiet! DARK POWER PRO 12 1200W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Home - Buy from Amazon

Intel Performance

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Using CPU-Z to start things, we find the XMP profile of the Lancer RGB MERA Edition lands somewhere in the middle of the pack. We got better results with our overclocks, finding our timings setup to nearly match the TEAM performance, but additional speed got us that extra bit to top the chart.

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Producing 107, 210 MB/s out of the box is quite good, but we can see that the slightly better-timed TEAM kit is ahead of XPG. Lowering the timings got us within 300 MB/s of the TEAM set, whereas allowing the Lancer RGB to run at 7600 MHz delivered performance well above the Delta RGB but also boosted performance here by another 7988 MB/s over the XMP result.

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Write performance is slightly better where placement is concerned. Out of the box, the Lancer RGB offers 104,290 MB/s throughput, landing XPG in first place. We lost a few hundred MB/s running them with tighter timings, but at 7600 MHz, we got another 9108 MB/s with minimal effort involved.

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The copy performance shows similar results, with XPG in the lead again at 103.750 MB/s. Tighter timings lose us some ground, but with the additional speed in the mix, we boosted the performance 8218 MB/s over the XMP score.

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The latency of the Lancer RGB MERA Edition is quite good, sitting in fourth place overall. We improved slightly with tighter timings, but it took more speed to overtake that TEAM kit and get to the top of this chart.

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With results like this, we cannot say that they are not good at getting finished with 32M runs of Super Pi. The results are in the five-minute and eight-second range, slightly behind the Viper and TEAM 7200 MHz solutions.

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3DMark Fire Strike results show that they do not fair near as well in this metric. While the results are not bottom of the barrel, they are almost a thousand points shy of the TEAM and Patriot solutions regarding the physics portion of the benchmark.

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PCMark 10 shows similar results, keeping the XPG kit lower on the list. We gained minimal headway with a tighter set of timings, but with additional speed, XPG rockets near the top of the chart, close to the 7000 MHz Corsair and 7200 MHz TEAM kits.

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Compressing files is another area in which XPG does a good job. While not the best on the chart out of the box, they are within a few points of the lead. We removed two seconds with tighter timings but took eight seconds off the time running the MERA Edition DDR5 at 7600 MHz.

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Cinebench seems to appreciate what XPG put forth. As you can see, they are in second while using the XMP profile, and while we assumed more speed would win, the tighter timings set surpassed what TEAM offered with very similar timings and ICs.

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We did expect XPG to do better in Handbrake, and while the results are not horrible, they are well behind what Patriot and TEAM accomplished under the same segment. While overclocking will reduce the time to complete these tasks, there are less than three seconds from best to worst.

Final Thoughts

For starters, this is the best-looking set of DDR5 to come from XPG. We have seen the ASUS ROG Certified version online, and while it is slick with the mirrored finish and ROG logo, we would much rather have this kit of MERA Edition RAM. With the mix of brushed aluminum, the linework on one end, and that pleasant-looking face of MERA on the other, it is tough to find fault with the aesthetic approach XPG takes here.

The ARGB diffuser is the same as we saw with other Lancer RGB kits. Still, with their ability for smooth color transitions and a lack of hotspots, the Lancer RGB MERA Edition delivers in spades with visual attractiveness and syncing the lighting to the rest of your build.

We like the use of SK Hynix ICs and the flexibility left for us to tinker with. If not for the unlocked Richtek PMIC, we would have seen limits due to the lack of voltage we applied to get these results. We would like to have seen a thermal pad on this PMIC, as we can see others pushing voltages much further than we did on this A-die kit, and too much heat around a PMIC can cause limits to show up. Otherwise, we cannot complain about the choices made with this set of DDR5.

Performance is good across many charts, sometimes chart-topping, with a few times that the tests did not play well together. XMP performance is decent, we cannot deny that, but there were quite a few times where we mentioned that TEAM and Patriot did better in this or that. That is something to consider. Depending on how you use your system or if the portrait of MERA on the sides is more than enough to sway you, we have to deliver the complete picture so that you may make an educated decision.

The most considerable setback to what we have in hand is the availability and pricing. With what is currently out on the internet, all we can say is wait, wait, wait. If the Lancer RGB MERA Edition has performed well enough, and you favor the look, wait until they come to Newegg or Amazon, do not pay the current prices. Considering we can find them, but at twice the cost of many in its class, at this moment, we would go to TEAM or Patriot for our 7200 MHz needs.

Our take on where these kits should be before you buy them? Looking at current Lancer RGB pricing with the same specs sold at $199, we could see a $50 premium due to the artwork and exclusivity. So when you see them around $250 or less, jump on a kit. Otherwise, you know where to turn.