Test System

Initial Setup

The ADATA XPG SPECTRIX D40 sticks most definitely look great when plugged into your system and powered up, especially if that system is an X299 one with RAM flanking both sides of the CPU socket. The LEDs by default have a scrolling pattern on them that switches through a rainbow of colors, but not just normal colors like red and green and blue...


You also get pink and yellow and purple, which many other sticks do not offer right out of the box. So if you've chosen some board other than an ASUS board, what these sticks offer directly out of the box does stand out compared to the rest of the RGB memory I've played with thus far.


The pattern repeats itself quickly, so much so that I quickly took these pictures shown here in an attempt to accurately show you the colors, but I was unable to capture them all since the pattern flowed by so quickly. Of course, you can adjust that speed should you have an ASUS motherboard, but for Intel's X299 platform, I do not.

Testing Rated Speeds

Once I got into the OS, I was quick to open CPU-Z and verify the 2666 MHz speeds at default from within the OS. However, CPU-Z showed me 2800 MHz, as pictured above. In order to help keep things clear, I included BIOS screenshots below that verify that the CPU-Z utility is wrong and the actual speed is 2666 MHz. One of my favorite testing tools, AIDA64, also confirmed the memory as running at 2666 MHz.


For those things that are not directly mentioned on the box, I've included several screenshots of the BIOS settings here to show you what the board had on tap for that default 2666 MHz memory profile.


This compatibility profile has pretty loose timings that could potentially impact overall performance, but these do help ensure that most systems will have no issues booting these sticks when you first put it all together.

My MSI X299 SLI PLUS does warn about enabling CPU settings that are above stock with this warning shown above about making sure you have an appropriate power supply. I did recently get a new PSU from Seasonic, a 1000W Seasonic PRIME TITANIUM 100W unit that has a single rail power delivery design that is sure to meet the needs of our X299 test platform, even when overclocked.